Oregon Pension Plan Ties Hands Of Gays

Posted: August 7, 2007 - 5:00 pm ET

(Salem, Oregon) Because a domestic partnership is not a marriage gays and lesbians who are covered by Oregon's Public Employees Retirement System cannot remove their ex-partners as beneficiaries to their pension plans.

Barbara Pinkerton and Katharine English signed up their same-sex partners as beneficiaries while they were employed by the state - Pinkerton as a teacher and English as a juvenile court referee.

But both relationships soured and the Pinkerton and English are now retired.

To their surprise both found they could not remove their partners as beneficiaries. The reason: the Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS, has a regulation that only married couples are allowed to remove a beneficiary from their state pension, and then only after a formal divorce.

Since same-sex couples are unable to marry they are unable to legally divorce, the PERS board ruled.

The ruling means that both women will receive lower monthly pension payouts.

Both women appealed the decision and were turned down. The case is now before the Oregon Court of Appeals.

LGBT civil rights activists in the state say that the case shows the pressing need for full marriage in Oregon.

In May Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed legislation same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples unable to marry to form legally recognized partnerships. (story) It takes effect next January.

The Family Fairness Act was intended to grant rights, responsibilities and protections afforded to other Oregon couples and their families currently only available through a marriage contract in Oregon.

The state has a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage and the partnership legislation was carefully worded to avoid legal challenges that it was trying to circumvent the terms of the amendment.

It grants bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or a partner's child, allow a person to choose a final resting place for a deceased partner, transfer property and assets from a deceased partner to his or her surviving partner if the deceased had no valid will, obtain joint insurance, enter joint rental agreements and get an equitable division of property in a partnership dissolution or annulment.

Nevertheless the dissolution or annulment provision does not satisfy the state's own pension plan requirements.

In addition, a conservative group is gathering signatures for a second constitutional amendment to nullify the domestic partner law.

This is another one of those "special rights" that are awarded to heterosexuals only...... and they think that we are wanting "special rights"...........

Even if I was a single person and I put my beneficiary as my brother, and he dies, it looks as if by their laws, I could not remove him as my beneficiary...... that could cause a problem.

I'll tell you the truth, after hanging around in a few forums where gay people dominate, then watch the media and watch the religious fanatics with their crazy propositions, I can see why we are in this mess.

It's hard to stay a "moderate" sometimes when you hang in the gay rights forums with the gay people trying to denegrate religion at every turn, but then the religious nuts do something stupid to validate the paranoia displayed by the gay rights fanatics.

Dayum. Can't we all just get along?

Well, when you have tele-preachers who are outed for having "discrete" sex with hustlers and doing drugs, sexual abusing priests who molest children, religious fanatics going out of there way to make the US government more "theocratic", and politicians sucking up to right wing constituients to change the definition of marriage and "family values" its no wonder gays and straights alike bash organized religion!

It not like isnt any ammo, ya know?

I don't know, I still think sometimes gays give way too much credit to "religious fanatics" ... just the same way some of the more conservative religious people give too much credit to "secular humanists."

Going by some of what is said from either side, you would think their respective "THEYS" are marching down the streets in legions... poised at any second to completely take over the country and round us all up for "re-education" camps.

I'm not sure if I need to duck out of the way of a mob of militant gay secular humanist socialst liberals on my way to the grocery store.. or watch my back for a bunch of Ultra-conservative, war-mongering, gay-hating, xenophobic Bible-Bashing fundies stalking the dairy section once I'm there.

Well, when you have a certian number of folks who dress in leather fetish gear for gay pride parades, or randy gay sex with total strangers in the park bushes being the favored passtime of apparenlty enough people to keep it going on a regular basis (and yes, I've heard first-hand accounts of such hijinks in at least one major American city).. then you have plenty of "ammo" to play up on gay stereotypes.

Point is, ANY group is going to have its weirdos and others who can, and will, reflect badly back on the whole crowd.

And since religion represents a HUGE demographic...well, it's simply a matter of odds.

Plus, a nasty tidbit along the lines of "the preacher who really liked sex with gay prostitues while a goat watches" is sort of a "hot" story right now. And having been in the news media for a number of years, I know editors and producers often think along the lines of:

"Hey, paper and/or channel X just had a good cover story about a preacher who has a pet goat and a gay man-whore on speed-dail. It's a TREND. Where's OUR story...on that... and damnit, get a quote from the goat this time."

that's why it's so bigoted to repeat such thinigs about gay people.

personally, I don't care how many skanks flash their tits and snatches at mardi gras in return for a strand of .19 plastic beads. And I don't care how many sluts get knocked up in their ghetto doorways because it's easier to take on the whole gang that way.

I don't believe it reflects on all straight people.

Now, now, Tristan... we don't say "skanks" and "sluts."

We say, "Girls you wouldn't take home to meet Mother."