Google Follow-Up

Never underestimate the ability of the anti-gay right to warp reality. Steven H. Miller has this commentary over at Independent Gay Forum on the right's reaction to Google's move to even out compensation for gay employees.

The Drudge Report headline was "Google to Pay Gay Employees More than Straight Ones?," while Fox News online called its story "Google Raises Eyebrows With New Gay-Only Employee Benefit." In the Fox account, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family complains, "How is offering more money to only one group to offset a perceived inequity not a form of discrimination against those groups not fortunate enough to receive such bonuses?”

In fact, Google is paying to cover the income taxes the government requires on health coverage provided to employees' same-sex spouses/partners. The federal government requires no such taxes to be paid on the value of health coverage provided to opposite-sex spouses (thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, the IRS can't recognize same-sex spouses). In other words. Google is ensuring that the take-home pay for employees with covered same-sex spouses is the same as that provided to employees with covered opposite-sex spouses.

Until the government recognizes same-sex spouses, private industry will continue to turn to this type of work-around in order to treat gay employees fairly, and to attract the talent needed to compete in the marketplace.

As I noted in my earlier post, it's just good business.

Here's the Fox News article -- pretty much what you'd expect from Fox. I didn't bother to read more than a few of the comments -- my capacity for smug ignorance is severely limited, and I pretty much hit overload when the article called Focus on the Family "a Christian organization aimed at providing practical help for marriage and parenting." I'd like some evidence that FoF has ever done anything that actually supports families.

And why the hell are they asking an organization as bereft of moral grounding as FoF to commment on something like this? That would be like Time asking James Dobson to comment on Mary Cheney's baby . . . oh, wait. Never mind.

The rest of Miller's post devolves into a rant about how unfair companies are to single employees, which is about what I'd expect from Miller. It occurs to me that my blood pressure might start dropping if I learn, finally, not to expect a lot from online commentators (or any other kind, for that matter). Did he ever stop to consider that under federal law, gay employees are legally single, no matter their real status? Why make the argument that people who aren't married (for whatever reason) are somehow more discriminated against than people who can't get their marriages legally recognized?