Agreed! My partner works for a company that acknowledges same sex partners and different sex partners who are unmarried. Recognizing commitment outside of the "one man one woman marriage" paradigm serves everyone.

Turning away service members in our current military state absolutely blows my mind. I have taugh/teach a lot of service people, and every one (to a person) supports people of all sexual orientations in the military. I'm sure there are folks on the other side as well, but the ones I have encountered care about the person's ability to do their job, not what the do on their r&r.

about time, my country has been arseing around with this for years, as wise the military, nobody is going to care when there are bullets flying past you.

True, it's a long time coming...

I think my company started offering domestic partner benefits a year or two ago. I'm happy they are offering health savings accounts along with a high deductible medical insurance option.

Which reminds me I need to get my open enrollment done. I wonder how long that will take via the slooooow satellite connection out here.

Got my fingers crossed the repairs we good on the house.

My company offers full benefits for what they term as household partners. Have for several years.

That is so very good! Someday that'll be the norm and we won't even celebrate it, just like some of the other progress of the past decades. Until then, we have to celebrate each move forward, company by company, state by state (even if - and perhaps especially if - it doesn't directly impact ourselves. Each move towards equality benefits everyone whether we are direct beneficiaries or not).

Great to hear about that! I've been fighting with a guy on Youtube for over a month now about this very same issue. He claims he's worried about how same sex couples can not "responsibly procreate" (which by no coincidence whatsoever is the same reason the oraganization Protect Marriage is using to back the California voter approved Proposition 8) but in dealing with him I found out that he is using that as an excuse to justify his intolerance. When the overturn of prop 8 is upheld in December I'm going to cheer just as loud as any homosexual.

What a huge step for these companies to make. Maybe if our elected officials actually listened to us there could be major changes nationwide.

Thank you for your post.

Don't Ask Don't Tell doesn't just affect gay service members; my fiance and I are polyamorous, and while his squad knows what's up and is fine with it, according to the UCMJ my behavior is "adulterous" and I could be subject to legal action if we were already married and the higher-ups found out about my boyfriend or any of my fiance's outside liaison.

And as for same-sex marriage, after meeting people in my soldier's unit who can't seem to stand their wives or kids and purposefully choose more or longer deployments so they don't have to play the husband/father role beyond a financial obligation.......I believe in equal rights wholeheartedly anyhow, but it seems like there's enough straight folks who get married and breed without thinking about it that if anything, a bunch of happy same-sex marriages couldn't hurt to offset all the misery!

We are making progress. Private religious morality cannot legitimately be forced on others as public policy. If we are not sovereign and equal in something as basic and personal as our sexuality (consent being a necessary given), we still have a long way to go to fulfill the ideals of the American Revolution.