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A Skeptical Look at Domestic Partner Benefits
A lecture delivered at the University of Kentucky Law School
by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
February 14, 2007
The University of Kentucky is considering a proposal to offer domestic partner benefits. In this lecture, I raise these questions. Is there a legitimate public or business purpose that is served by expanding the class of people who can be claimed as beneficiaries of taxpayer supported employee benefits? Can the legitimate needs of gay people can be met by some alternatives to the University’s proposal?
I will argue that the arguments for a business purpose for this proposal are not persuasive. I argue further that the arguments for a public purpose for targeting benefits in this particular way are fatally flawed. The stated public purpose is for fairness and equity in employment. But the groups targeted by the current proposal, namely, unmarried sexual partners, do not meet legitimate public purposes. Some of the arguments in favor of domestic partner benefits, are actually arguments that would cover a much broader class of people than those currently targeted. Fairness and genuine inclusiveness argue for including all those involved in relationships of mutual support, whether in sexual relationships or not. This could include blood relatives and some sets of unrelated individuals. In either case, the proposal is flawed and should either be either scrapped or significantly revised. The legitimate needs of gay people can be met without excluding other worthy people, and without singling out unmarried sexual partners as subjects of particular state solicitude.
The Rationales of the University of Kentucky for Its Domestic Partner Benefits.
What business or public purpose is served by the use of tax dollars for benefits for an expanded class of prospective beneficiaries? The University’s Work Life Committee1 offers two specific rationales for extending benefits to domestic partners: competitive recruitment and retention, and equity of fair compensation to employees. We might call the recruitment and retention rationale a business purpose, and the equity rationale a public purpose. Let’s look at these two rationales to see if they are justifiable expenditures of taxpayer resources.
The Business Purpose of Domestic Partner Benefits
The first rationale is that allowing employees to name unmarried sexual partners as beneficiaries will improve the University’s hiring and retention practices. As evidence, the Committee cites the fact that many other similarly situated universities offer this option. However, they offer no reason to think that domestic partner benefits are a crucial factor in the decision-making of a significant number of prospective employees.
As if to underscore this point, the Committee’s report itself argues that the benefit will not be expensive, because not very many people will sign up for it. They use as an estimate that 1.5% of the workforce will elect opposite sex domestic partner benefits and .5% will elect same sex domestic partner benefits. On this basis, they argue that the costs of the program will be manageable. 2
But if this is truly the number of employees who will use the program, there is little reason to think domestic partner benefits will provide a significant recruitment and retention advantage for the university. Most university employees are drawn from the local residents of Lexington. For these employees, the additional benefits will be a pure windfall and not an inducement to choose employment at UK rather than another local employer. Thus, the fact that other universities offer domestic partner benefits is likely to be a recruiting inducement at most for the 30% of employees who are faculty members.
Even among prospective faculty members, the proposed benefit is unlikely to be a large inducement for a significant number of people. Many academic departments have the luxury of being in “buyers’ market,” particularly for entry level faculty members. The Committee offers no reason to think that domestic partner benefits would improve recruitment more than comparable expenditures on other aspects of compensation. An especially desirable prospective faculty member could almost certainly be lured with higher salary, rather than the opportunity to have university provided benefits to a non-marital sexual partner.
Therefore, it is questionable whether there is a significant business purpose in offering domestic partner benefits.
The Public Purpose of Domestic Partner Benefits
Let us turn to the second rationale, equity of fair compensation to employees. The Committee cites the University’s nondiscrimination policy, which lists sexual orientation and marital status as grounds on which to not discriminate. However, so far as I can tell, no one has threatened the University with discrimination suits over their differing benefits packages for married couples and others. And indeed, most of the Report’s discussion is not over specific instances of unfairness. Rather, the Report stresses that the “acceptance of domestic partner benefits is seen as a barometer for the climate of tolerance and support that the University, as a workplace, extends to its employees.” 3 In other words, benefits for domestic partners is a symbolic issue.
At this point, it is fair to ask exactly what the University intends to symbolize with this particular proposal. Since the Report is not too specific on this point, I decline to speculate on their specific intentions. Instead, I raise two questions. Given the groups who are included and excluded from registering as domestic partners, what will the proposal in fact symbolize? Secondly, is this a statement the taxpayers of Kentucky and the University of Kentucky actually intends to make?
To analyze these two questions, I shall take two brief side trips away from Kentucky. The first will be a brief detour to Michigan. And the second will be an extended trip, across the Atlantic to a recent case in the United Kingdom.
The Symbolism of Exclusion and Inclusion
A Detour to Michigan
A recent decision on the domestic partners program offered by the University of Michigan provides a useful point of departure. The State of Michigan Court of Appeals4 ruled that the domestic partners benefits offered by the U of M and several other state entities violated the state’s recently enacted Marriage Amendment. The language of that amendment stated “the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose.” This language is unique to the Michigan amendment, and so it is not clear how Kentucky courts would interpret the proposed program. But the Court’s reasoning sheds light on the question of the symbolic public purposes of domestic partner programs.
The court looked at the criteria for inclusion in the various programs offered by the University of Michigan, the city of Ann Arbor and several other government entities. The plans shared five attributes that the Court argued are the same basic criteria for the requirements of legal marriage. 5
1. Each plan requires that the partner be of the same sex, mirroring the legal requirement that the spouse be of the opposite sex.
2. Each plan requires that there be some kind of agreement concerning the relationship, corresponding to the law that marriage requires the consent of the parties.
3. Each requires that the partner can not be a blood relation, mirroring the requirement that blood relatives can not marry.
4. Each requires that the domestic partner not be married to another or have a similar relationship to another person, corresponding to the prohibition against bigamy.
5. Each mandates an age requirement of 18 years of age, corresponding to the requirement that the legal minimum age for marriage is 16 years.
The Michigan Appeals Court concluded that this targeting of the beneficiaries of the program amounted to a recognition of a union similar enough to marriage that it was prohibited by the marriage amendment. The Court left open the question of whether a more broadly based domestic partners program would have been acceptable. In other words, a program that permitted opposite sex couples, blood relatives or room mates may be compatible with the language of Michigan’s marriage amendment.
The Kentucky proposal has a strength and a weakness compared with the Michigan programs. Kentucky’s program is broader than Michigan’s in that the proposal at the University of Kentucky makes no stipulation as to sex. Either opposite sex unmarried partners or same sex unmarried partners are equally eligible for the Kentucky program.
However, this very feature which strengthen the Kentucky program by making it more inclusive is a weakness in another sense. Like the Michigan programs, the Kentucky program quite clearly mirrors the requirements for marriage. With the exception of the same sex requirement, applicants for domestic partnerships under the University of Kentucky program must meet the same criteria as the Michigan programs. The Kentucky program targets any unmarried sexual partners, without going so far as to explicitly ask people whether they are sex partners. The criteria mirror the requirements for marriage so closely that we can safely conclude that the framers intend to cover non-marital sexual unions and no other kinds of relationships.
What can we conclude about the symbolic meaning of the Kentucky domestic partnership program? We can conclude that the University intends to benefit, welcome and thereby affirm, any and all unmarried sexual unions. But this symbolic act is highly problematic. To see why, we must review what we know and don’t yet know about the social benefits of various types of unions and relationships.
The evidence about the social benefits of opposite sex marriage in comparison with cohabiting unmarried couples is clear and conclusive. Married couples produce more social wealth and social capital in a variety of dimensions. The children of opposite sex married couples do better on a variety of measures of well-being than do children in any other family form. Married couples live longer, enjoy better health, accumulate more wealth than do others. 6
Specifically, comparing cohabiting couples with married couples, we know that cohabiting opposite sex couples have higher rates of domestic violence toward each other.7 Marriage is safer for women than cohabitation. Women are more likely to be sexually assaulted by a cohabiting boyfriend than a husband. Even after controlling for education, race, age and gender, people who live together are three times more likely to report violent arguments than married people.8 Even among adults who as children may have witnessed violent marriages, marriage itself provides some protection against domestic violence. 9
Cohabitation may be more violent than marriage because sexual jealousy may be more prevalent among cohabitors. 10 Women who cohabit are 8 times more likely to be unfaithful than married women and cohabiting men are 4 times more likely as married men to have sex with someone else. 11And when domestic violence does erupt, marriage seems to make it easier for the law to contain the behavior. A study of the affects of mandatory-arrest policies on future domestic violence found that marriage matters. Husbands who were arrested became less violent, while boyfriends actually became more violent toward their partners after being arrested for relatively minor assaults. 12
Cohabitors are more likely to be depressed than married couples, and the presence of children exacerbates depression among cohabitors, but not among married couples. Cohabiting couples also perceive their relationships as less stable, and this contributes to their overall depression.13 Cohabitors in general report poorer relationship quality than married couples. 14
About half of cohabiting couples have children present. And cohabiting relationships are less stable than married relationships. 15 Instability is harmful to children. Cohabiting opposite sex couples display more violence toward their own children than do married couples. According to a British study of child abuse registries, a cohabiting father is 20 times more likely to abuse his child than fathers who are married to the child’s mother. And the mother’s cohabiting boyfriend is even more dangerous to her child: the British study found the cohabiting boyfriend to be 33 times more likely than a married biological father to abuse the woman’s child. 16 A study in 2005 found that children who live in households with adults unrelated to them have a risk of inflicted-injury death that is almost 50 times the risk to children residing in households with 2 biological parents. More than 80% of these households with unrelated adults consisted of the child’s mother and her boyfriend and in 74% of these households, the mother’s boyfriend was the perpetrator.17 An American study found that mothers’ boyfriends contribute less than 2% of nonparental child care, but they commit almost half of all reported child abuse by nonparents. 18
We can conclude then, that cohabiting opposite sex couples do not produce the same social benefits as married couples. There is no social benefit from the University creating a “welcoming” and “tolerant” environment by treating cohabiting opposite sex couples as if they were married. It would be more socially responsible to discourage cohabitation, rather than encourage it.
I focus on the cohabiting couples because we already know something about how they behave in comparison with married couples. It is too soon to tell whether same sex couples living in civil unions or domestic partner arrangements will behave more like opposite sex married couples, or more like opposite sex cohabiting couples. We are not in a position to extrapolate one way or the other about how domestic partnerships will affect the behavior of the same sex couples who enter them. In spite of this uncertainty, the University’s proposed policy lumps same sex couples and unmarried opposite sex couples together under the heading of “domestic partners.”
So let’s ask ourselves now, what symbolic statement does this proposed University’s policy make? It says that unmarried sexual partners make social contributions that are comparable to those of married couples. It says that blurring the boundaries between married and unmarried sexual partners is good social and public policy. But we already know that this proposition is demonstrably false in the case of unmarried opposite sex cohabiting couples. The University should not be asking the taxpayers of Kentucky to endorse the proposition that cohabiting opposite sex couples make social contributions equivalent to married couples.
Lingering in the background, is the claim that justice and equality for gay people demands some form of domestic partner benefits. But using this particular means of providing gay people with benefits they can obtain no other way, encourages a lifestyle known to be socially destructive among opposite sex couples. The opposite sex couples could, in principle, could get married to obtain University benefits. They don’t need a domestic partner benefit as urgently as do gay couples.
Is there another way to solve the problem that gay people face of finding suitable support for their dependents? To find out, let us take a longer trip, this time, across the Atlantic.
A Trip Across the Atlantic: >From the U of K to the UK.
Joyce and Sybill Burden are two sisters in their eighties who live together in their family’s home in Wiltshire, England. They took care of their parents and their two aunts until they died. The sisters have lived in this home since 1965, when the house was built for 7,000 pounds sterling. The house is now worth at least 875,000 pounds sterling. 19
The sisters recently appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. Why? Because they fear the day when one of them dies. The surviving sister will owe an inheritance tax of 40% of the assessed value of the house. The sisters do not have liquid assets in that amount. The surviving sister would have to sell their home, in order to have enough cash to pay the inheritance tax. They appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that they were being discriminated against. If they were lesbians, they could form a civil union and their property would transfer to the surviving sister without any inheritance tax.
The European Court threw out their case. They accepted the argument of the British government that the sisters had not chosen to enter into any legally-binding agreement. Their relationship was strictly the result of birth, so the benefits of civil union status can not be given to the two sisters, aged 88 and 80.
But many of the arguments that gay rights advocates offer in support of their claims for domestic partnership benefits apply equally well to this case. The sisters have been involved in a lifelong relationship of mutual support, and the support of dependents. They have done a social service in providing care for four different elderly relatives. They do not have the option of getting married, just as same sex couples do not. Why should we not affirm these two sisters, their lifetime of commitment to each other, their lifetime of service to their family, every bit as much as we would affirm two lesbian women who had lived a lifetime together in mutual support and service?
Admittedly, the British case is distinct from Kentucky’s case in that the British case involves inheritance, rather than health insurance and other benefits. But in one sense, the inheritance case is even stronger than the health insurance case. The property belonged to their family. If we understand the family to be the primary social unit, then the family is more than a collection of individuals. When one member of the family dies, the property should remain in the family. In this case, if Sybil Burden dies, her sister Joyce doesn’t really “inherit” anything. Joyce’s life goes on as before, in the same house, with the same possessions and the same assets. She has merely lost her sister. But the state’s position is that it is the primary organ of society. When a person dies, their property reverts to the state, for it to dispose of as it sees fit. The state claims Sybil’s property. For Joyce to remain in her home, she must buy Sybil’s share back from the state at the price of the inheritance tax. 20
But the reasons in support of benefits for unmarried sexual partners applies every bit as much to cases of blood relations taking care of one another. The social benefits of providing university benefits to gay couples all accrue equally to many of the other groups excluded under the proposal. Other kinds of living arrangements generate some or all of the social benefits that same sex couples generate, and therefore are equally worthy.
So a more inclusive solution is also a more just solution. Offer domestic partner benefits for all, not just for people in unmarried sexual relationships. Include blood relatives who are not married, such as these elderly sisters, a couple taking care of an elderly parent, or one sibling taking care of a disabled sibling. And of course, one could still include the unmarried opposite sex couples.
This solution solves the benefits problem that same sex couples face, without endorsing unmarried opposite sex couples. Cohabiting couples would simply be folded into the more general category of roommates or other unmarried adults, without endorsing any particular arrangements over others. This is far superior to the proposal to essentially single out unmarried sexual partners for special support and encouragement.
This more inclusive proposal would have the symbolic benefit of endorsing those who commit themselves to caring for and sharing with others, who may be unable to secure employment on their own. This is every bit as worthy a social goal as the goal of affirming unmarried sexual partners. After all, gay people want their mutual care for each other to be rewarded and affirmed. The fact that they are having sex with each other, while certainly important to them, is not particularly what they want to be affirmed for. Their sexual activity is the part of their lives that they consider none of anybody’s business.
Parenthetically, allow me to say that many people in the Marriage Movement share the view that I have just expressed. I have conversed with some of the activists behind the Michigan Marriage Amendment, who were also involved in the recent litigation. They are open to the idea of a more inclusive domestic partners program, and believe that the Court’s language permits this. Robert P. George of Princeton University, recently endorsed a similar position in National Review. 21 Expanding the scope of employee benefits is perfectly fine, so long as it does not target unmarried sexual partners for special consideration and benefits.
Cost Considerations.
Of course, this more inclusive proposal would be more expensive. Virtually any one could sign up someone as a domestic partner under these rules, since the rules would not mirror the marriage rules requiring exclusivity. But, with suitable pricing, this could be made to work. To do so, the University would have to work with their insurers to craft a set of prices, shared between the employees and the university, that would keep the program solvent.
The University and its consultants at the Mercer Group argue that domestic partner benefits are not all that expensive because of the relatively small number of new enrollees, and the relative health of those who enroll. The Mercer Group points to the fact that women are typically more expensive to insure than men, because of the costs and complications of child-birth. Since lesbian women have fewer children than straight women, lesbians are correspondingly cheaper to insure. This factor, the Mercer Group argues, outweighs the extra expenses associated with greater health risks that some gay and lesbians face. 22
Surely, though, this is not necessarily the long-term equilibrium of such a program. As time goes on, and more people learn about the programs, more people will be likely to arrange their affairs so as to qualify. As the current population of enrollees ages, their health care needs will become more expensive. As more lesbians choose to have children within their domestic partnerships, the cost of covering lesbian women will more closely mirror the costs of insuring all women.
The University assures us that the adverse selection problem would not be serious under their current proposal. In other words, they do not believe that a significant number of people would strategically register a seriously ill friend as a domestic partner, just to get the benefits, under their definitions that mirror marriage requirements.23 If they are confident of that, I think we can be equally confident that we could craft rules that would limit the number of people who would abuse the more inclusive program.
But if adverse selection proved to be a significant problem, that too, could be dealt with using pricing. The University could make a point of charging lower premiums for the relationships that proved over time to be the most stable, such as married couples and blood relatives, and charge higher prices to people who appear to be roommates and perhaps some intermediate categories at intermediate prices.
How Domestic Partner Benefits Fit Into the Movement for Equal Dignity for Gay People
The gay rights movement regards domestic partner benefits as one of many steps toward attaining equal dignity for gay people. As part of that movement, domestic partner benefits can be viewed in several distinct ways. The benefits can be viewed as a solution to a very specific problem, namely, the problem of providing health insurance for the same sex partners of employees. Or domestic partnerships can be viewed as a gesture symbolizing equal dignity for gay people. Or domestic partnerships can be viewed as a step toward reconstructing marriage, by blurring the distinction between unmarried sexual partners and married couples. I have no doubt that different people within the broadly-construed gay rights movement assign different priorities to these three views. And I also have no doubt that the wider public has much more sympathy with the first two views than the third.
For my own part, I do not consider the dignity of gay people to be in question. Every human person is created in the image of God, and so has an intrinsic and inviolable dignity. Whether I like what they do or agree with everything they believe has no bearing on their dignity. At the same time, my regard for another person’s dignity does not require me to affirm everything they do or agree with everything they believe. The inherent dignity of gay people is not in question. Nor is it a negotiable issue.
That leaves the other two issues: solving the problem of providing for the dependents of same sex couples, and the integrity of marriage as an institution. I believe it is possible to solve the real material problem that same sex couples face, without at the same time, claiming that unmarried sexual partners should be treated as the equivalent of married couples. This is the solution I favor, and I believe that many people in the marriage movement favor. For us, the issue isn’t gay people. The issue is marriage.
No doubt, some people will want to know whether I believe gay people should be allowed to marry. I do not. The reason I think not is that I do not believe the same institution can equally accommodate the needs of opposite sex couples and of same sex couples. I believe that asking the same institution to meet the needs of both would change the institution of marriage beyond recognition, and that it would not, in the end, serve the needs of same sex couples as well as alternative arrangements. But explaining all of why I think so would take us too far afield. That is a discussion for another time. For now, I would be glad to entertain questions on the subject of domestic partnerships.
But as I said before, for me and most of us in the marriage movement, the issue isn’t gay people. The issue is marriage. I hope you can believe us when we say this.
2University of Kentucky, Work-Life Committee Domestic Partner Benefits Report, January 15, 2007, pg. 5.
3University of Kentucky, Work-Life Committee Domestic Partner Benefits Report, January 15, 2007, pg. 4.
4 State of Michigan Court of Appeals, publication date February 1, 2007, No. 265870. National Pride at Work et.al v Governor of Michigan and City of Kalamazoo and Attorney General.
5 State of Michigan Court of Appeals, publication date February 1, 2007, No. 265870. National Pride at Work et.al v Governor of Michigan and City of Kalamazoo and Attorney General, pp. 9-10.
6 For book-length treatments of this general point, see, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially, (New York: Doubleday, 2000); David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence that Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Jennifer Roback Morse, Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World (Dallas: Spence Publishing, 2005); William J. Doherty et.al.,Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences,
(Washington D.C.:Institute for American Values, 2002); David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America: Confronting our Most Urgent Social Problem, (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
7See for instance, Murray S. Straus, “Sexual Inequality, Cultural Norms and Wife-beating,” Victimology, 1 (1976), 54-76; and R. Stark and J. McEvoy, “Middle Class Violence,” Psychology Today, 4 (1970) 52-65; Kersti Yllo and Murray A. Strauss, “Interpersonal Violence Among Married and Cohabiting Couples,” Family Relations, 30 (1981) 339-47. Jan Stets and Murray A. Strauss, “The Marriage License as a Hitting License: A Comparison of Assaults in Dating, Cohabiting and Married Couples,” Journal of Family Violence, 4, No. 2 (1989) 161-180, show that cohabiting couples are higher rates of assault, and the violence is more severe, than among dating or married couples. Jan Stets, “Cohabiting and Marital Aggression: The role of Social Isolation,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53 (August 1991) 669-680 attributes the increased domestic violence among cohabitors to social isolation. Prior cohabitants had a higher rate of pre-marital aggression than did young couples who did not live together. “Prevalence and Distribution of Premarital Aggression Among Couples Applying for a Marriage License,” Journal of Family Violence, 7, No. 4 (1992) 309-318. About 50% of the women presenting themselves to a southwestern U.S. battered women’s shelter were cohabiting with, not married to, their abusers, “A Comparative Study of Battered Women and Their Children in Italy and the US.” Laura Ann McCloskey, Michaela Treviso, Theresa Scionti, and Guiliana Dal Pozzo, in Journal of Family Violence, 17 No. 1 (March 2002), 53-74.
8Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage, op.cit. pp. 155-157.
9Nicky Ali Jackson, “Observational Experiences of Intrapersonal Conflicts and Teenage Victimization: A Comparative Study among Spouses and Cohabitors,” Journal of Family Violence 11 (1996): 191-203.
10Cohabiting women are more likely to have “secondary sex partners” than are married women: “Sexual Exclusivity Among Dating, Cohabiting and Married Women,” Renata Forste and Koray Tanfer, Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (February 1996) 33-47. Cohabitors have lower commitment to the relationship, lower levels of happiness and worse relationships with their parents than married couples, “ A Comparison of Marriages and Cohabiting Relationships,” Steven L. Nock, Journal of Family Issues, 16, No. 1 (January 1995) 53-76
11Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage, op.cit. pp.91.
12Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage, op.cit. pp. 157.
13 “The Effect of Union Type on Psychological Well-Being: Depression Among Cohabitors versus Marrieds,” Susan L. Brown, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 41, No. 3, (September 2000), 241-255.
14“Cohabitation Versus Marriage: A comparison of Relationship Quality,” Susan L. Brown and Alan Booth, Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (August 1996) 668-678; “The Link Between Past and Present Intimate Relationships,” Jan E. Stets, Journal of Family Issues, 14, No. 2 (June 1993) 236-260.
15 Popenoe, Life Without Father, op.cit. pg. 41, notes 92 and 93.
16Broken Homes and Battered Children: A Study of the relationship between child abuse and family type, Robert Whelan, (London: Family Education Trust, 1994), esp pg 29, Table 12. See the discussion and interpretation of this report in my Love and Economics: why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work, (Dallas, Spence Publishing, 2001), pp. 92-95, and in Patrick Fagan, “The Child Abuse Crisis: The Disintegration of Marriage, Family and the American Community” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1115, June 3, 1997.
See Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, “Discriminative Parental Solicitude: A Biological Perspective,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, May 1980, pg. 282; Michael Gordon and Susan Creighton, “Natal and Non-natal Fathers as Sexual Abusers in the United Kingdom: A Comparative Analysis,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 50 (February 1988): 99-105. Leslie Margolin, “Child Abuse by Mothers’ Boyfriends: Why the Overrepresentation? Child Abuse and Neglect, 16, (1992) 541-551. In Ontario, Canada, 41% of abused children came from single-parent families, more than three times the provincial rate of single-parent families. “Child Abuse and Neglect in Ontario: Incidence and Characteristics,” Nico Trocme, Debra mcPhee and Kwok Kwan Tam, Child Welfare, 74, No. 3, (May/June 1995) 563-587.
17 “Child Deaths Resulting from Inflicted Injuries: Household Risk Factors and Perpetrator Characteristics,” Patricia G. Schnitzer and Bernard G. Ewigman, Pediatrics, 2005; 116; 687-693.
18Leslie Margolin, “Child Abuse by Mothers’ Boyfriends: Why the Overrepresentation? Child Abuse and Neglect, 16, (1992) 541-551.
21 Robert P. George, “Families and First Principles,” National Review, February 12, 2007, pp. 31-38.
23 University of Kentucky, Work-Life Committee Domestic Partner Benefits Report, January 15, 2007, pg. 6.
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