Seeing the Light
One would think that some company would realize that making energy-saving light bulbs for Americans in the United States would be a truly green move. Less of a distance between factory and consumer should mean less fuel consumed overall.
Alas, the lure of low wages and lax environmental enforcement—compact fluorescent bulbs use small amounts of mercury—have led General Electric and other companies to make them in China. American unions have started to ask why that must be the case.
Labels: CFLs, civil unions, energy savings, stupid corporate tricks
Separate and Quite Unequal
Why is gay marriage so important to some people? The easy answer is that every alternative to it, for gay couples, is so utterly lousy.
Nickie Brazier called UPS, where she is a driver, to add Heather Aurand to her health insurance the day after their Feb. 22 civil union in New Jersey, knowing it would save them $340 a month. But UPS said no. "They said it was because we’re not married," Ms. Brazier recalled.
Dr. Kevin Slavin was able to sign his partner up for the health plan at the hospital where he specializes in pediatric infectious diseases but soon learned that both men's benefits would be treated as taxable income—not the case for his married coworkers—and that his partner could not collect his pension if Dr. Slavin died.
Merissa Muench of Mount Olive, N.J., said her employer of seven years, a medical sterilization office where she is a technician, told her the company did not cover civil union partners.
"It just irks me that a guy they just hired, his wife—bing!—has health insurance," said Ms. Muench, 30, who declined to name her employer for fear of being fired. "What else does the gay American community have to do to prove that we're worth it just as much as you guys?"
Nearly two months after New Jersey became the third state to approve civil unions for same-sex couples, many are finding that all partnerships are not created equal, raising questions about whether the new arrangement adequately fulfills the promise of the State Supreme Court ruling that led to it.
Merissa Meunch just pointed out the utter absurdity of heterosexual privilege in American society. if encouraging marriage is so important that married couples ought to receive literally hundreds of special benefits, then those benefits ought to extend to gay and lesbian couples as well. Alas, too many Americans are content to treat gays and lesbians much worse than everyone else. Republicans have thrown their lot in with the Christian Reconstructionists who view homosexuality as somehow reprehensible; Democrats are too often too timid to point out the absurdity of encouraging only certain, God-approved, versions of families.
At least in Massachusetts, there is hope. In Massachusetts, the number of legislators who support gay marriage has increased from 50 members out of 200 to fully 141 out of 200. most of the difference has come from legislators changing their minds in the face of widespread evidence that same-sex marriage has been good for the state. And in New Hampshire, although the state legislature is unlikely to approve gay marriage anytime soon, an amendment to ban same-sex marriages went down to decisive defeat last month.
Labels: civil unions, gay marriage, heterosexual privilege
