Honda’s infertility problem
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As if automakers didn’t have enough hot-button issues to deal with (fuel economy and global warming, for example), Honda can add another to the list: gay and lesbian rights.
The American Fertility Assn. this week accused the automaker’s Alabama division of denying insurance coverage to same-sex domestic partners seeking so-called third-party fertility treatments (artificial insemination involving sperm or egg banks, surrogate motherhood, etc.) while providing coverage for opposite-sex domestic partners.
It seems the issue came up when Alabama Fertility Specialists in Birmingham looked into insurance coverage for one of their patients seeking artificial insemination, who works at Honda’s Lincoln, Ala., manufacturing plant and is in a same-sex domestic partnership.
Dr. Michael Steinkampf, founder of the fertility clinic, was quoted in a news release from the fertility association as being “a little disappointed” by the automaker’s stance. (Honda’s U.S. manufacturing facilities are set up as semi-independent operating companies, and policies such as employee benefit plans can vary among plants.)
Honda, however, issued a statement saying the insurance plan covering the 4,500 workers at the Alabama plant doesn’t pay for third-party fertility treatments for any domestic partner couples, regardless of gender.
“The plan includes domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples” in other areas of coverage, the automaker said.
The initial — and, according to Honda, flawed — reading of the plant’s policy drew praise from Donald Wildmon, the Mississippi moralist who gained a measure of notoriety in the 1980s for attacking movies, music (Madonna, anyone?) and TV shows he deemed offensive.
Toward the end of a press release criticizing the California Supreme Court’s ruling this week that prohibits doctors from discriminating against gays and lesbians, Wildmon urged members of his American Family Assn. to contact Honda, “thanking them for taking a logical and reasonable position.”
It wasn’t clear Thursday evening whether Wildmon’s “Action Alert” resulted in a flood of supportive phone calls to the Lincoln plant. A Honda spokesman said he hadn’t heard of any.
As for Steinkampf, he sounds a bit tired of the whole thing. No one was picketing outside his clinic Thursday afternoon, although one patient did call to say that she would no longer be in need of his services.
“I’m OK with that,” the doctor said good-naturedly.
And Honda?
“We’re happy to have them here in Alabama,” he said. “They’re a good company that by and large takes good care of its employees.”
The Lincoln plant, by the way, makes the decidedly family-friendly Odyssey minivan. On the other hand, About.com’s Gay Life site toasted the Honda Element in 2006 as the “Best Ride for the Trendy Gay Man.”
Wildmon evidently will have to settle for a draw on this one.
-- Martin Zimmerman