Utah Politician Seeks Gay Friendly Insurance

Utah politician Jenny Wilson’s a clever woman.

The Salt Lake County councilwoman will introduce legislation expanding the region’s insurance laws to cover gay and lesbian employees. Expecting conservative backlash, Wilson, who is a Democrat, based her bill on Salt Lake City’s, which purposefully ignores sexuality:

[Wilson] will urge her colleagues to widen the county’s coverage to include any “adult designee” who lives with an employee and is financially interdependent.
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While the policy could have a profound impact on the county’s gay and lesbian staffers, the benefits aren’t tied to sexual orientation – a detail that could make the change more palatable to Republicans, who scuttled Wilson’s first attempt to create a domestic-partners program.

Under Salt Lake City’s broader adult-designee policy, 78 percent of participants are not gay.

The council’s dominated by Republicans 5-4, but we’re hoping at least one GOP member can be persuaded to do the right thing, rather than the Right thing.