Domestic debate
UT's lack of partner benefits causes strife
Alia Orra
Issue date: 10/24/05 Section: News
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When Louis Escobar's partner of 17 years experienced the death of his mother, he went through the motions of any ordinary UT staff or faculty member: he informed his supervisor that he would need to be absent from his position as interim coordinator of the Multicultural Student Center for a few days.
He filed the necessary paperwork so that he could tend to the pain at home, make arrangements for the Marion, Ohio, funeral and take the three days of family leave he believed were entitled to any UT employee in this kind of situation.
But then he received word from the human resources department: Escobar didn't get those kinds of benefits. He'd have to use his vacation days if he still wanted to take leave.
"Maybe someone in HR knew that I was gay," Escobar said. "So I was a bit bothered by that because I really did think that the University of Toledo would have those benefits."
Sitting in his small office cramped by papers, books, a huge Martin Luther King, Jr. poster and a window overlooking Centennial Mall, he returned to the lack of domestic partner benefits he receives from UT. He has more acute words.
"I feel the hurt, but I suppose I've given up on anger a long time ago," Escobar said. "Because I don't know what good comes out of being angry ... I think it's more a disappointment ... a realization that we've not come as far along as we thought."
In the fall before Issue 1 passed, Michelle Stecker, a reverend with a doctorate in American History and UT law student, had been supporting the quiet work of her partner of four years or so, Carol Bresnahan, vice provost for academic policies and programs.
In those few months before November of 2004, they say there was distinct support all around for domestic partner benefits.
But then there was the election; the 62 percent of Ohio voters who scratched in their ballots with number 2 pencils marking "yes" to make same- sex marriages unrecognized by the state. There was the swift denial of domestic partner benefits on the part of UT because of legal liabilities.
There was also a distinct turn in the way Bresnahan and Stecker began to spend their downtime and their disposable income.
They turned from a couple who spent dinnertime discussing workdays and home refinishing to giving each other hour-long debriefings on their civil rights activism.
"I wonder what I did with my time before I had to be an activist," Bresnahan said, giving a laugh in frustration. "I would rather give my money to the University of Toledo than give my money to groups willing to fight for our rights. But I have to put my rights first."
"We're suffering financially; a minimum five, $10 thousand every year because of health benefits we don't have," Stecker said. "And sometimes more. One of our faculty members, who's legally married in the state of Massachusetts, his partner had a heart attack. That will cost them tens of thousands of dollars that their family has to try to absorb."
So Stecker and Bresnahan, as they said in their own words, became activists.
Later that school year, in UT's second semester, a movement began on campus to try to sway UT's board of trustees to offer benefits regardless of Issue 1.
Escobar and Stecker requested to speak at a February board meeting; later, both sides would disagree as to why the two were denied time to present their case to the board.
But they were determined to make their case nonetheless, and Stecker, her mouth covered with a piece of shiny silver duct tape like the rest of the protesters, filed into the meeting.
They hummed the "Star Spangled Banner" and then filed out.
"I think it really unnerved [the board members] because the media was there for us," said Evan Morrison, a sophomore majoring in history who participated in the Feb. 23 protest.
Although Johnson later said he found their interruption "disrespectful" in its nature, he and other board members later met with Morrison and the UT students and faculty members involved because, as Morrison put it, "They wanted to hear what we had to say, why we made a big deal about it."
Today, five other public Ohio universities have moved to offer domestic partner benefits: Ohio State University, Miami University and Ohio University among them.
This coupled with a recent ruling by an Ingham County, Mich., judge saying that the ban on gay marriages and civil unions did not make it illegal for public universities to provide benefits to gay employees and their partners has given activists hope, they said.
"The university has never offered benefits to unmarried partners," said Andrew Jorgensen, associate professor of chemistry and chair of faculty senate. "And so that's not a change [and] there are some faculty members who think that we should use the legal definition of marriage and if they're not married they should not have benefits."
For Stecker, the success of those on the other side of her battles is stifling.
"It's mind boggling for me to realize that there are people out there that are actively spending their time and money to take away my basic civil rights," she said, falling back in her seat in exasperation. "And they are. They are."
Part three looks at those on the other side of the debate.