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Compiled By GayToday
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—Twenty-two University of Pittsburgh students, including members of the Equal Rights Alliance, continued their h unger strike into a second week Tuesday protesting the school's denial to same-sex couples of shared medical benefits. The hunger strikers, who began fasting April 12, have received moral support from Pittsburgh's Mayor Tom Murphy, who has said he favors the school's granting of the contested medical benefits to gay and lesbian partners. Pittsburgh, throughout the 1990s, has bared employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Heterosexual couples, they argue, apply for benefits without proof of marriage. Under Pennsylvania's liberal common-law marriage statues, a heterosexual couple can simply verbally agree to be married. Thus, the requirement of marriage—even loosely defined-- uniquely harms gays and lesbian couples legally ineligible for marriage and therefore for health benefits. Pittsburgh's Human Relations Commission had concluded in May 1997 that the university's policy "has resulted in disparate treatment [for employees with same-sex partners] in comparison to heterosexual employees." Thus far, according to reports received by GayToday, none of the hunger strikers have as yet felt any serious health effects as a result of their abstentions. A doctor has been brought in to examine them. The activist group, serious about having its demands met, says its members will strike until the university capitulates and does what is right by Pittsburgh standards. The university hinted that it has been pressured by state representatives in Harrisburg who have threatened to cut appropriations to the school should it grant same-sex couples any medical benefits. |
