Please help me educate myself on the issues that the LGBT face.
February 2, 2012 7:30 AM   Subscribe

How do LGBT rights impact corporate, state, and federal policies? What are some trustworthy resources on the issues that the LGBT community and populace at large face?

Some one I know in the Human Resources sector mentioned that gay rights hurts companies and the government because 1) Gay benefits offer a multitude of costs at the expense of companies and their employees, and 2) Gays don't have children, so the benefits they request are without merit to some degree.

My BS-meter wants to go off, but I don't have any facts to back my opinion.
posted by Giggilituffin to Human Relations (12 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
There's this from American Progress, and this about the movement to 'gross up' the benefits so they're not costing employees as much out of pocket. I'd retort (if it were me) that gay employees are on the hook for the premiums and productivity that make it possible for these benefits to offered out anyway, so I think the cost issue is a red herring (esp. after the gross-up stuff is done).
posted by jquinby at 7:38 AM on February 2, 2012


because 1) Gay benefits offer a multitude of costs at the expense of companies and their employees, and 2) Gays don't have children, so the benefits they request are without merit to some degree.

If hiring someone isn't profitable, a company generally (barring a situation where the employee is a relative, etc.) isn't going to do it. Companies who hire workers provide benefits packages, whether or not required by law, as part of the cost of acquiring a worker who can be productive. The person with whom you spoke is willfully blind to the true cost-benefit analysis that occurs.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 7:47 AM on February 2, 2012


Well, for 1) "Gay benefits" don't cost any more than "straight benefits". Yes, if employers cover more people it is more expensive but that would be true of any expansion of benefits. Presumably, providing benefits in the form of, for example, healthcare, also has payoffs for the employer in terms of increased productivity, job retention, etc. Someone with more knowledge of these issues will come in and give more info on this point I'm sure.
2) is just wrong. Gay people have children! Many benefits aren't child related anyway, but lots of gay people do have children-- biological and adopted.
posted by ninekinds at 7:49 AM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


Lots of gay people certainly do have children, and lots of non-gay people remain childless.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 8:06 AM on February 2, 2012


The person you spoke with is correct, but LGBT rights is not a cost issue.

It would also be cheaper for corporations to have a legal reason to deny benefits to other minorities.
posted by toomuchpete at 8:13 AM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


By the logic of #1, the company shouldn't hire married people either, as married people cost the company more than singles. (Assuming the employment benefits include health insurance for a spouse.)

And aside from the fact that gay couples do have children, #2 is at odds with #1. If the company is concerned about the "multitude of costs," it should prefer childless employees over ones with children, if it provides dependent health care benefits.

It's not like the company is paying for benefits for children that don't exist. If the company has (these numbers are purely made up) 10000 straight employees with 25000 children among them (an average of 2.5 children per straight employee), and 1000 gay employees that have 500 children among them (an average of 0.5 children per gay employee), the employer pays the insurance company for coverage for the 25,500 children that actually exist, not the 27,500 that would exist if gay employees had the same average number of children as straight employees.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:18 AM on February 2, 2012


The person you spoke with is correct, but LGBT rights is not a cost issue.

No, they are incorrect. Gays don't have children? Really?

Love, the child of a gay man.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:32 AM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


Given the person was blatantly wrong about #2, I'd be curious if they have a source for #1.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:36 AM on February 2, 2012


I think your best response is to just laugh out loud.
posted by vitabellosi at 9:10 AM on February 2, 2012


Best answer: I would check in with the Williams Institute at UCLA. They have tons of data on this sort of thing. (economic impact reports here.)

LGBT people obviously have families and children. Try Family Equality Council for resources. They just put out a report that I think said like 2 million kids have same-sex-couple parents.
posted by manicure12 at 9:24 AM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


Best answer: (Obligatory "we're talking about in the US here" caveat)

Before you can talk about any of this stuff it's important to remember two things:

One, the vast majority of benefits any employee gets are optional on the part of the employer. Well, option in the sense that they are not legally required to provide them as a condition of employment. They tend not to be optional in the sense that if you want to keep an employee you have to offer them. Paid time off, whether it be sick or vacation, is rarely required. Health insurance is not (currently) required. Retirement plans are not required. Etc.

Sub 1: However there ARE conditions about whether you can offer some things to some folks without offering them to everyone. If you want to have a 401k plan, for example, you cannot let the top folks have it without having it available (and even utilized to a certain extent) to the lower-compensation employees. There may be such conditions for vacation time and health care; I don't know.

Sub 2: Just because you don't have to provide them to someone as a condition of employment doesn't mean you will get anyone to TAKE the job if you don't offer them.

Two, a lot of benefits fall into a classification where they can be provided to an employee without having to tax it as income. Health insurance is the classic example and its special nature here has been pointed to by a lot of people as part of the reason our system of health care is so fucked up. Ezra Klein has written a lot about this idea of the invisible health benefit, what role it may have played in stagnant wages, etc.

The upshot of the untaxed benefit is that it's a way an employer gives you $1 without you having to pay taxes on it. So when they hand you $1 in health care benefit you get $1 worth. If they hand you $1 in salary and you have to go use it to buy health care you are at a disadvantage because they withheld various amounts from it - you actually received $0.80, lets say.

So, to finally get to the point of your question, if an employer is going to provide a benefit to an employee that would be tax-exempt if they were in a recognized heterosexual marriage then it costs them what it actually costs.

If they are going to provide it to an employee in a non-tax-exempt situation then they have two choices.

Option 1: provide it and leave the employee on the hook. If it costs $500 a month for that employee's partner to get health coverage then they add that $500 to the employee's W-2 form and eventually the employee will pay taxes on it.

Option 2: provide it and also compensate the employee for the additional taxes they'll pay.

So yes, if you have two employees in committed relationships and one is gay and the other straight and you commit to providing them equal benefits it could cost you more.

The important things to remember here are these:

One, you already don't have employee cost parity. An employee who is single and young costs you less. An employee who needs ADA support (raisable desk for someone in a wheelchair, say) costs you money that the person in the next office doesn't.

Two, these expenses are 100% tied to the absence of marriage equality and a failure to recognize same-sex couples identically to hetero couples. If you prefer you can say they're a problem caused by allowing for untaxable benefits. If we simply removed that classification it wouldn't matter if someone's partner was same or opposite sex.
posted by phearlez at 10:10 AM on February 2, 2012 [2 favorites]


I'm a straight woman covering my unmarried SO through my company's health policy as a domestic partner. The tax implications are ridiculous and require quite a bit of administrative costs.

Since he's not family or a dependent, the entire benefit is taxable. That means that the company needs to deduct his benefit from the otherwise non-taxable health care costs they have. I have separate lines on my paycheck for "personal health insurance" "domestic partner insurance" and "imputed domestic partner benefit". Only the first line is exempt from income tax. I pay 170/mo for his insurance, and my taxes on that benefit are 225 a month. There are additional employer side payroll taxes that I don't see like SS and Unemployment.

To go from "we only offer tax free benefits that require minimal records" to "we offer a blend of benefits with varying tax implications" is an enormous process change, and process changes in large bureaucratic companies are often expensive.

As for #2: If heterosexual single parent households are the norm, salaries will be bid up beyond what a double income no kids household needs. Instant boost for many gay couples. But that's about as far as I could stretch my imagination. And I think the opposite has happened where dual income is now the norm, and single earners struggle due to the changed market conditions.
posted by politikitty at 11:08 AM on February 2, 2012


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