Businesses contracting with California must provide same-sex partner benefits: new law

by Jeremy Kryn

SACRAMENTO, CA, September 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed a bill that will require all businesses that have contracts in excess of $100,000 with the state to provide benefits to the same-sex partners of homosexual employees.

The new law comes at the same time as pro-family activists are defending Proposition 8, the state’s voter-approved ballot measure defining marriage as a man and a woman, in court.

“Claiming to be anti-discriminatory, this new law discriminates against all employers who limit their benefits to married couples, according to the State’s own definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman,” Ron Prentice, the Executive Director of ProtectMarriage.com, the organization behind Proposition 8, told LifeSiteNews.

The Equal Benefits law was authored by Democratic Senator Christine Kehoe, a lesbian, and received the enthusiastic support of the homosexual lobby.

“The state’s tax dollars earned by hardworking Californians should not be invested in companies that unfairly discriminate against LGBT people and their families,” said Roland Palencia, Executive Director of Equality California, the largest statewide homosexual activist organization. “We are grateful to have Governor Brown and Senator Kehoe continuing the fight for the rights of all California workers.”

Equality California claims that “thousands of businesses and other entities” offer benefits to homosexual partners as a direct result of similar laws at the local level in California and other states, “including automobile companies, most airlines and many Fortune 500 companies.”

Prentice, however, said that at the heart of the so-called “Equal Benefits” law is “a small minority of individuals” which has “abused their offices to mandate the silencing of rights of conscience and religious liberty through government interference.”

“For example, now-retired Judge Vaughn Walker, in his federal district court decision against Prop 8, disregarded all case law in favor of biased testimony and his own reflections on changing culture and legislation,” he said. “Although there is strong legal precedent that favors the protection of traditional marriage’s definition, Proposition 8 in California, legislation that advances homosexuality is often used by judges as cover for their pro-homosexual decisions.”

Brown in July signed a law mandating a pro-homosexual curriculum in schools and forbidding any teaching that reflects negatively upon homosexuality. Conservative leaders in California are gathering support for a referendum to block that law.