Four legs better than two?

The Palm Beach (Fla.) Community College recently decided that gay employees of the school cannot obtain health insurance for their partners.And while that move angered gay rights advocates in the area, the trustees then made a decision that baffled just about everyone, including the Editorial Board: They added a new health insurance benefit plan for unmarried employees’ pets.\nThe College’s reasoning is even worse than the idea itself. According to the school, a pet is a defined, true member of an unmarried person’s family, but a life partner is not.\nA wide variety of plans are offered, which cover wellness care, X-rays and vaccinations, among other things. “Your pet is a member of your family – his quality of life is important to you,” the veterinary insurance company said.\nFirst of all, it must be said that we at the Editorial Board are definitely not anti-pet by any means, but Palm Beach’s idea is stupendously dumb. The main issue at hand isn’t that pets should not be eligible for some sort of health insurance plan.It’s that the College has taken it upon itself to decide that pets are more important than people. And regardless of what the folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals say, the truth is, they just aren’t. \nPets are definitely crucial to the homestead in today’s world, and their needs should always be met, but the needs of human beings are definitely more important. Especially when it comes to a necessity like health insurance. \nThe decision to live an alternative lifestyle should never be subject to any sort of discrimination, and Palm Beach’s absolute neglect of the evolving definition of “family member” is ludicrous. More and more homes are being created by gay and lesbian people, and if the employees say that their partners are members of the family – and that’s as close as they can get because of the ban on gay marriage – then they should at least be able to add them to their insurance plans. \nIf people love their pets enough and think them to be members of their families, the Editorial Board believes they should have every right to seek out forms of insurance for them, but only after the humans in the family that need to be covered are covered. \nThis decision by Palm Beach Community College is yet another instance when people are able to take their love for their pets to the furthest extremes. Some people already treat their pets better than some of the humans in their lives – better clothes, expensive drinking water, etc. – but this behavior has to stop when it treads on the rights of people. There’s a final issue to consider: What happens when people decide to have a domestic partnership with their pet? Would the coverage continue? Let us hope it never comes to that because the Palm Beach Community College would have a difficult choice in front of it.