The Pittsburgh City Council gave final approval today to a domestic partner registry. The registry will provide a standard for employers to allow workers to share benefits with their partners. Openly gay city council member and former Victory Fund endorsee Bruce Kraus wrote the legislation.

The legislation passed by a vote of 7-1 and brought cheers from several people in the audience who were at the meeting to receive a proclamation for Pride Week events. Kraus said that the legislation shows that “Pittsburgh is in fact a very progressive and forward-thinking city.”

The Post-Gazette reports:

The legislation drew two opponents to council’s public comment period, including one who called it “a black eye for the city” leading to “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Delta Foundation Board Member Keri Harmicar countered that “every single person in this city, and this country, and this world, has a right to happiness” and that means embracing different sexual orientations.

The legislation allows any two city residents — unless they are too closely related to be married under state law — to show documentary evidence of their commitment, pay $25, and be registered.

If one is a city employee, then the couple would immediately become eligible to share benefits. The city has long offered benefits to domestic partners and common law spouses of its employees, but the new legislation tightens up definitions.

Other employers could opt to accept the registrations for the purpose of granting shared benefits, but would not be obligated to do so.

Council added an amendment making the names on the registry — but not any supporting documentation of mutual commitment — public records.

Pittsburgh City Councilman and former Victory Fund endorsee Bruce Kraus has proposed rules for a domestic registry that would allow any two city residents to make a “declaration of mutual commitment” and “contribute mutually to each other’s maintenance and support.”

According to the Post-Gazette, the registry would provide benefits to city employees but would not apply to other employers.

“The definition of family is a very broad definition,” Kraus said. “This assists people in legitimizing their relationships and families.”

The Post-Gazette reports:

“It makes us a much more desirable location for young, bright, cutting-edge people who want to come in and live in progressive areas,” Mr. Kraus said. “It really is about being a good place to attract progressive employees and employers, and grow.”

The legislation would allow any two city residents — unmarried people of the same or opposite sex, parents and children, or siblings, to name a few — to report to the city Personnel Department and present documents indicating “mutual responsibility.” They would have to show three such documents, which can include loan papers, utility bills, insurance policies, wills, powers of attorney, contracts, motor vehicle titles, bank or credit account statements, or evidence of mutual child care responsibility.

They then would be certified as domestic registrants, until one party either presented an affidavit terminating the relationship or died.

Registrants who are city employees would be entitled to joint health, dental and vision insurance and other benefits. Domestic partners of city employees can already be insured together on city policies, but the legislation would better define eligibility and modestly extend joint benefits to include sick leave, bereavement leave and family leave.

The proposed rules affecting city employees are “really about fiscal responsibility” because they improve the city’s ability to ensure that only true partners share benefits. “This gives us a good, solid criteria for paying these benefits,” Mr. Kraus said.

Other employers would not be bound to respect city-sanctioned domestic registrations, but would be welcome to use the certifications in granting things like insurance benefits and hospital visitation rights.

Openly gay Pittsburgh City Councilman penned a column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday condemning a proposed constitutional ban on marriage equality and calling it “homophobia, bigotry and sanctioned discrimination of a selected class of people.”

Kraus, who won election to the City Council last year with the support of the Victory Fund, adapted his piece from remarks he made at a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic.

Kraus writes:

Today, once again, by the actions of our Pennsylvania General Assembly, I am reminded that the last, socially acceptable targets of discrimination within our society are gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people. With Senate Bill 1250, Pennsylvania state legislators, under the guise of morality and religiosity, seek to amend the constitution of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to read: “No union other than a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage or the functional equivalent of marriage by the commonwealth.”

With all the challenges that we, as a commonwealth, are facing — deteriorating infrastructure; staggering health-care costs; municipalities crippled by the inability or unwillingness of legislators to ensure that nonprofits contribute toward ever escalating municipal service costs; rampant gun violence; and corruption in government — certain Pennsylvania state legislators would like us to believe that defining marriage and outlawing civil union is our most pressing legislative priority.

In reality this is their mark of shame.

Legislating a ban on same-sex marriage or civil unions is homophobia, bigotry and sanctioned discrimination of a selected class of people. I would liken homophobia to racism, sexism and anti-Semitism because it seeks to dehumanize people and deny them their dignity, personhood and equal protection under the law. In the year 2008, would you dare to legislate to deny marriage or civil union based on race, creed, age or ethnicity?

Read the rest of Kraus’ column here.  Currently, the Victory Fund has endorsed Kevin Lee as a candidate for the Pennsylvania state legislature.

The president of the Pittsburgh City Council has demanded an apology from Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern for her recent remarks surrounding gays, including the assertion that gay people are “infiltrating” city councils nationwide. In an e-mail to Kern, Doug Shields said he was “thoroughly disgusted” by her comments and that he was “astonished that someone who presumably took an oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the laws of this nation would espouse hateful, bigoted and un-American views.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

“I sit here in my office and only wonder who else might be on your ‘less equal’ list,” Mr. Shields wrote. “I also wonder, if we should follow your illogic, what it is we should do about this ‘threat’ to the nation? Round them up and put them in extermination camps? . . . Of course you always have the option to relocating to a country that embraces polices of persecuting those who are ‘less equal.’ But then again, you to may run the risk of being persecuted yourself.

“As the president of the Council of the City of Pittsburgh, I require an apology from you for your senseless, mean-spirited attack on one my colleagues and the council as a whole,” he continued.

He also said that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s recent prostitution scandal was less of an offense than these remarks..

In 2007, the Victory Fund helped elect openly gay candidate Bruce Kraus to the Pittsburgh City Council, making him the body’s first openly LGBT member.