Partner Benefits for UC Employees

Your Nov. 21 editorial, “Wilson at UC: the Smell of Presidential Politics,” was so far out in left field that it is still going. Your subtitle, “Back off governor--gay benefits are an administrative issue” separates you from grass-roots America. It is not an administrative issue, it is a moral issue and your inability to grasp that fact brings into question your qualifications to honestly serve the community, as Gov. Pete Wilson was trying to do.

This lifestyle you wish to reward with live-in benefits is anathema to the basic tenets of most civilized societies. And isn’t it amazing that the UC regents, in all their wisdom, excluded from the live-in benefits the straight couples who could not afford the marriage tax but chose to live together anyway? We plain California citizens who recently overwhelmingly voted against minority preferences cannot fathom what the ivory-towered academics are trying to accomplish but we’re sure it would feel at home in the city charters of Sodom and/or Gomorrah.

H. L. BRADBURY

Granada Hills

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I do not agree with Wilson’s politicized statements for not supporting UC partner benefits (Nov. 21). He believes that granting partner benefits is morally wrong and expensive. How could providing equal benefits to others who are denied by the state the chance to codify their relationship with a piece of paper be more morally wrong than having a governor of a state extend the bigotry and prejudices of his own person and party by denying rights to those seeking to be equal to and not less than?

If he did some research on the “cost factors,” he would find that other cities and businesses providing partner benefits actually have less costs from these groups than families that have been officially defined and recognized by the state from their marriage license.

RICK McGILTON

Signal Hill

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When the UC Board of Regents extends health benefits to the partners of gay university employees, it would be only equitable to extend the same benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples. Following through on this, it would also be equitable for such gay and unmarried couples to pay their income taxes using the married tax rates.

MICHAEL A. GALLO

Thousand Oaks