While the issue of benefits in these situations may be treated equally under the laws of states that recognize these partnerships, they will not be treated equally under federal law because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed by Bill Clinton. That act states that marriage is between a man and a woman. This denies same sexl couples everything a heterosexual couple is eligible for under federal laws.

For example:

A company may allow a same sex couple to participate in health insurance benefits. However, the value of those benefits for the partner is taxable income for federal taxes (just just the premium co-pay, the actual value). These can add thousands of dollars to the employee’s W-2. Plus many companies allow employees to pay the premium co-pay with before-tax dollars. This could not be done for a same sex partner.

Also, employees can put before tax dollars into a health flexible spending account to pay co-pays and deductibles and other health expenses not covered by health insurance. A same sex partner cannot participate in that account.

Same sex partners are not recognized as eligible surviving spouse beneficiaries for pensions.

There are hundreds of examples like this. Before there is real equality, DOMA must be overturned or repealed. This is why the recent lawsuit is so important.

“We pay the same dues to our unions. We pay the same co-pays and deductibles. We make the same retirement contributions as everyone else,” said Ford. “We do the same work as our married colleagues, and we pay the same taxes that everybody else pays except we are not offered the same benefits that married people are.”

And then there are bogus Equal Protection issues:

Different counties applied different standards to identical ballots, thereby disenfranchising voters who lived in one county but enfranchising voters in other counties. It is a violation of the constitutional right of Equal Protection to count some votes but not others based solely on a voter’s residence.

It is wrong that a man would invoke the Equal Protection Clause in the furtherance of his self interest but not in the furtherance of the interests of millions of hardworking, taxpaying, law abiding Americans who are real victims of systematic discrimination. Norm sees himself as “too big to fail”. The rest of us, “too small to matter”.