Wake Forest University extends employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners

Starting this semester, Wake Forest University is extending employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners of staff and faculty members.

Wake Forest joins about 120 other colleges and universities around the country that offer same-sex domestic partner benefits, according to Daryl Herrschaft of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay and lesbian rights group. "It's a move whose time has come," Herrschaft says. "If institutions want to attract and retain top-caliber candidates, they have to offer these benefits. More than half of the colleges and universities ranked in the top fifty by U.S. News and World Report offer same-sex domestic partner benefits." The Human Rights Campaign maintains a database of employers offering domestic partner benefits at .

The addition of Wake Forest to this list is notable because of the school's Southern Baptist affiliation. Wake Forest was founded by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in 1834, but cut formal ties to the convention in 1986. Although it is now an autonomous institution, the university does retain a "voluntary fraternal relationship" with the Baptist church, for instance in the joint awarding of scholarships to Baptist students.

According to university spokesperson Kevin Cox, granting benefits to same-sex domestic partners has been fairly uncontroversial so far. "There may have been individual complaints to individuals on campus, but there hasn't been any organized protest," Cox reports.

"There were faculty members who felt the university should be doing this, and the university listened," Cox says. Members of the Wake Forest AAUP chapter pushed to get domestic partner benefits on the university's agenda, says Simone Caron, the chapter's president.

To be eligible, partners must have been in a relationship for at least twelve months and share the same home. Biological or adopted children of either partner are also eligible for benefits. Opposite-sex domestic partners are not eligible.

Joseph Colombo, professor of theology at the University of San Diego and chair of the AAUP's Committee on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Faculty Concerns, explains that some colleges and universities exclude heterosexual couples from coverage under domestic partner policies because they can get married and obtain standard family benefits.

The Wake Forest AAUP chapter endorses full domestic partner benefits and plans to continue working for coverage for opposite-sex domestic partners this fall. "Don't get me wrong; the university has taken a wonderful first step," Caron says. "But we think heterosexual partners should be eligible for benefits too."

Copyright American Association of University Professors Nov/Dec 2000
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