I’ve written before about how the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leaves same-sex families behind. Looks like HRC is stepping up to the plate here:

The DoL [Department of Labor] issued a notice that they plan to make changes to some of the regulations governing how the FMLA is administered—and asked groups to comment. HRC submitted written comments to DoL last Friday detailing our concerns with the proposed rules. We also made recommendations that FMLA leave be expanded through regulations and legislation to fully protect the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. . . .

While some of these expansions can’t be done by DoL, there is a bill in Congress that could do this. The Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act (H.R. 2792), introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), would expand the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 to permit an employee to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave from work if his or her domestic partner or same-sex spouse has a serious health condition. It would also permit employees to take unpaid leave to care for a “parent-in-law, adult child, sibling or grandparent.”

I continue to have concerns over HRC’s handling of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and its willingness to forge ahead without the inclusion of gender identity/expression, but on the matter of family leave, they seem to be right on target.

Lesbian mom Mary Cheney has joined the Board of Directors of the Richard B. and Lynne V. Cheney Cardiovascular Institute. I’m guessing it wasn’t a rigorous interview process.

The press release says “As a director, she will help to form the strategic direction for the Institute.” This is in addition to her work as Vice President of Navigators LLC, a strategic communications and political consulting firm. I’m assuming Mary’s partner Heather Poe is handling most of the childcare duties in the household, or the couple is shelling out for some serious nanny coverage. The Secret Service, I imagine, doesn’t change diapers.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll do so again: I can’t imagine being lesbian and supporting the conservative candidates that Mary has. At the same time, I think she has the opportunity to change minds in a way we on the left can’t, precisely because she does straddle a line that few of us cross. Whether she will step up to the challenge is another question.

I received an e-mail today from the the Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights (MOTHERS) coalition. They are looking for parents in the D.C. area to testify for a Senate committee next week “on how FMLA [the Family and Medical Leave Act] has helped them or why they were unable to take FMLA.”

I thought some of you out there might be interested in participating, especially since non-biological parents are often unable to take leave under FMLA. (They can if they adopt, but adoption is not always an option and not always timed to best suit the family.) Regardless, I think it is important that LGBT parents be a voice for general parenting rights as well as LGBT-specific ones. (The same goes for non-LGBT parents-rights advocates, as I’ve said in a previous post. We have many common goals.) Below is the MOTHERS letter in full. If you do contact them to testify and would be willing to share your experience with others here, please leave a comment.

Dear MOTHERS Supporter,

The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee is conducting a hearing on the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) on Wednesday, February 13th at 3 PM.

They have asked for assistance in finding parents in the D.C. area who are available to testify on how FMLA has helped them or why they were unable to take FMLA.

If you, or someone you know, would like to testify at the hearing, please contact us and we will connect you with the appropriate parties.

New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. and the New York City Pension Funds today called on two dozen major corporations, including ExxonMobil, to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Comptroller’s office says this is nearly twice as many proposals as in the previous proxy season, and the second season in which all new measures include gender identity.

After the ENDA debacle last year, it is refreshing to see gender identity part of a push for widespread employment anti-discrimination measures. Not that federal protections aren’t still necessary, but I think there’s value in taking gains where we can. Bit by bit, we’ll show that equality for the entire LGBT spectrum isn’t something to fear.

Will the Pension Funds’ pressure work? Hard to tell at this point, but according to the press release:

Shareholder support for the proposal has increased in each subsequent year it has been filed: in 2007, it was supported by 37.7 percent of shares voted; in 2006, it was supported by 34.6 percent of shares voted; and in 2005, it was supported by 29.4 percent. . . .

The resolutions build on proposals submitted by the Pension Funds for more than a decade asking dozens of Fortune 500 companies to adopt policies that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

To date, 50 companies have amended their policies to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. During the last proxy season alone, eight companies agreed to adopt explicit prohibitions against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

This year, management at six of the companies has already agreed to adopt the changes, and the Comptroller’s Office has since withdrawn those resolutions.

What’s even more interesting? Besides Thompson, the New York City Pension Funds’ trustees include Mayor Michael Bloomberg, rumored to be considering an independent presidential bid. Will he step up to the plate with a better LGBT-rights platform than the other candidates—and if so, is this the worst thing that could happen to the left, a la Ralph Nader’s bid in the 2000 election? Or will the LGBT community not forgive him for his 2005 decision to appeal a lower court ruling declaring same-sex marriage legal within New York City?

Posh parenting magazine Cookie recently pointed out all the federal and state protections offered to new parents. (Article is not online; thanks to Elisa via MomsRising for the tip.)

None of the federal protections, of course, apply to same-sex couples. The non-biological parent of the couple is not entitled to any parental leave under federal law. Since FMLA is a federal law, even employers in states that legally recognize same-sex couples don’t necessarily have to offer these benefits to employees. (In some cases, however, state law requires them to offer similar benefits, or individual companies may choose to do so. If the non-bio parent later does a second-parent adoption of the child—if such adoption is even legal in that state—she may qualify for parental leave as a new adoptive parent, but that could be months after the birth.)

Here in Massachusetts, we’re lucky. The Washington Post has reported that “companies in Massachusetts are hardly ever using federal law as an excuse to deny equal benefits to same-sex couples married in that state.” In New Jersey, however, where same-sex couples can unite in civil unions that are supposedly equivalent to marriage, “at least 1 in every 7 civil-unioned couples in New Jersey is being denied equal benefits by an employer.”

I’ve written before about how the family-rights movement and the LGBT movement need to work together. It’s great that organizations like Moms Rising are pushing for more family-friendly policies. I searched in vain on their Web site to find any statement of support for the rights of LGBT workers and their families. Unless family-rights groups also work to ensure that all families—mine included—are recognized as such, they’ll still be leaving some of us out in the cold.

Mary Cheney is ending her seven months of maternity leave and going back to work Monday. She’s taking a new job as a VP of strategic communications for Navigators LLC, “a full-service issue management, governmental relations and strategic communications firm” that has worked for that has worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain, among others. The Washington Post reports, however, that Cheney will focus on corporate PR.

No word on whether she was or is still breastfeeding, or if she’ll pump at the office. Maybe the Secret Service will clear the break room for her.

What tips would you give Mary for balancing work and family?

Finally, someone talking about women’s careers and families and not making it sound like an epic battle. In an article at Huffington Post, Emily Amick and Rosanna Hertz report on their survey of women from the Wellesley College classes of 2007, 2008 and 2009 “to find out their expectations for work and family.” What they discovered was a refreshing sense of balance:

To “have it all” these women are willing to sacrifice a little bit of everything. They envision a life plan in which they combine work and family while letting go of hardcore notions of success. They no longer feel forced to choose between becoming the top honcho and PTA mom of the year. . . .

While others may see them as “mommy tracked” or treading water when they leave the fast-track lanes, they are immune to being pigeonholed and labeled as less than competitive. They have chosen an alternative definition of success which includes remaining a member of their professions on their own terms.

Raised to believe they could be and do anything they want, the idea of choice has become the singular word that legitimizes anything and everything these young women do. . . . Feminism empowers them to make the decision they think is best for themselves. Hoping to be a stay at home mom or a working woman, both groups are simmering that they have to “make a choice” at all. . . .

This attitude (and I can’t believe it is exclusive to this group) portends greater social changes. These women want spouses or partners who will share household and childcare duties. They want parental leaves of six months to a year, so that a significant spell as a stay-at-home parent “might become a normal part of a work path rather than a terminating factor.” They also want better childcare and after-school programs so they don’t have to schedule and manage nannies: “These young women do not want to patch together care giving solutions. . . . Young women want their communities to play a significant role in meeting the demands of raising kids and continued employment. . . .”

Yes, they are worried about finding a happy balance. The outlook, however, seems less gloomy than when reported in the context of the media-hyped “mommy wars”:

These women are not willing to give up any part of their identity in deference of a success defined by someone else. . . . To do this, many are willing to let go of unrealistic notions of perfection and the intensive pace that has escalated in both corner offices and playgrounds. In the end though, they are confident that they truly will be able to find a balance, and “have it all.”

Amen to that. Worth reading the full article.

(Full disclosure: I am a Wellesley alumna. I reviewed Hertz’s book, Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice last fall.)

I’m posting below (with permission) an op-ed by Matt Foreman, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In it, he brings us up to date with what NGLTF has been doing to push for a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that includes protections for gender identity and expression.

Not all in the community feel as Foreman does, however, which is why ENDA has become the hot issue among LGBT activists for the past few weeks. For contrasting opinions, see the columns by Susan Ryan-Vollmar and Richard Rosendall in Bay Windows. (See also the Guest Opinion in Bay Windows by members of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, which agrees with Foreman.)

Here’s what Foreman has to say:

All of us, every one of us
By Matt Foreman, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

At this critical moment in our efforts to pass an Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that includes transgender people under its protections, it is important to recall just why so many of us believe that no one can be left behind.

The last five days have been a grueling and defining moment in our movement’s history. When we learned that protections for transgender people would be stripped from ENDA, an unprecedented groundswell of anger, energy and determination rose up to reverse that decision.

The other day, a letter signed by more than 300 national and state advocacy organizations that work on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people was delivered to Congress, asking for more time to garner support for ENDA as it was originally introduced. Some 2,500 congregations were asked to activate their memberships to call Congress. Students are also calling and e-mailing Congress and launching Facebook accounts to build support, working from 120 LGBT campus resource centers. Action alerts, blog postings and opinion pieces supporting a trans-inclusive ENDA have been flying over the Internet. Read more »

New studies from the Williams Institute at UCLA have shown that same-sex parents in Illinois, Michigan and Rhode Island have “significantly” lower average and median incomes than opposite-sex married parents in those states. (I’ve omitted exact numbers for ease of reading; you can find them in the original reports, however. Thanks to Gay Wired for the link.) Same-sex parents in those states are also less likely than married parents to own their homes. I’m not sociologist or economist enough to give a full analysis of why this may be. Discrimination may play a part, as may the fact that many of us pass up career opportunities in order to maintain corporate benefits or avoid an environment where we feel less safe.

Same-sex couples without children, however, make significantly more than same-sex couples with children. One would assume the reasons above apply equally to same-sex couples regardless of parental status; I’m guessing the gap here is because couples with children are more likely to have one partner who stays at home with the kids or passes up career opportunities in order to maintain a child-friendly schedule. Read more »

Last week, the Human Rights Campaign released its 2008 Corporate Equality Index, which rates major U.S. companies on their LGBT friendliness, based on inclusive benefits, anti-discrimination policies, marketing, and philanthropy. A record 195 businesses earned the top rating of 100 percent. I didn’t blog about it last week, however, because I saw Working Mother magazine was this week releasing its own 100 Best Companies list, measuring companies on their “workforce profile, compensation, child care, flexibility, time off and leaves, family-friendly programs and company culture.” I thought a comparison would be more interesting than a rehash of the HRC press release.

The comparison of Working Mother’s Best to HRC’s 100-percenters can’t be apples-to-apples, however. Unlike HRC, which only includes relatively large companies, and not colleges or universities, Working Mother includes private and public firms of any size, including educational institutions, except for those “in the business of providing work/life or child-care services.” They also limit their list to 100 picks, whereas HRC will include any company that meets the 100-percent requirements.

Having said that, I think it’s worth noting the 50 companies that make both lists: Read more »