Hollywood’s Dual Standard Showing Again : If it were serious, extension of health benefits would not be restricted to same-sex partners.

Imagine you’re a successful television writer. You’ve just signed a lucrative contract for a new fall series. Now you’re eager for the Writers Guild of America West to extend your existing health insurance benefits to your pregnant live-in girlfriend.

Sorry, pal. No dice. Guild policies don’t permit unmarried members to include their partners in health coverage. OK, fair enough, you say. This policy has probably been around for 40 years and predates the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

But wait a minute. It’s not old. In fact, it’s brand new. And there is a glaring exception to this policy. New rules expected to be adopted by the guild next month will permit extending health insurance coverage to domestic partners if--and only if--they are homosexuals.

Let me get this straight (no pun intended): If a male member of the Writers Guild shacks up with a woman, the woman is not eligible for health-insurance benefits. But if a male guild member shacks up with another man, that partner can be covered.

Doesn’t this represent a prima facie case of discrimination based on nothing more than sexual orientation? I thought liberal Hollywood was supposed to be against this kind of bias and double-standard? And isn’t this an example of granting special rights to homosexuals and lesbians? I thought liberals wanted only to guarantee equal rights for all?

These basic questions, if they have ever been raised over power lunches at Le Dome or Spago, don’t seem to bother anyone in Hollywood, In fact, the hottest concept in the entertainment industry right now--besides velociraptors--seems to be extending health-insurance benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

The Writers Guild is about to do it. And Warner Bros. is the latest major entertainment company to announce such a move, effective Aug. 1. MCA/Universal, HBO and Viacom have all recently adopted similar rules, most of which specifically exclude extending benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples. Sony, Disney and 20th Century Fox are reportedly considering jumping on the bandwagon.

But let me pose a tough question to those in Hollywood who are implementing this policy: What intellectual or moral justification is there for providing special privileges to homosexual couples?

Last year, you may recall, many of Hollywood’s celebrity political activists called for a boycott of Colorado because that state’s voters had the audacity to approve an initiative prohibiting special civil rights based on sexual orientation. Liberals, in Hollywood and elsewhere, scoffed at the notion that anyone was interested in extending special rights to homosexuals and ridiculed as bigots, homophobes and Neanderthals anyone who made such suggestions. Now Hollywood seems set on proving their case.

But why would the guild and these entertainment companies go out of their way to extend benefits to same-sex domestic partners to the exclusion of those of the opposite sex? Could it be they are just interested in making a trendy political statement?

Maybe this is the way would-be politicians in Hollywood attempt to legislate their own brave new morality on their own little captive culture. Knowing the insular, homogeneous nature of the entertainment industry, there’s an excellent chance very little debate or discussion about these policies has even taken place.

The only plausible argument to emerge in support of this kind of blatant discrimination is that heterosexual partners have the right to marry while homosexuals do not. But this is no more than a smoke-screen. The reasoning doesn’t stand up to anything more than superficial scrutiny. For instance, does anyone who employs this logic really believe that all or even most homosexual couples would marry if they had the opportunity? Not likely.

A real cynic might suggest that the bean counters at the guild and major studios made a calculated decision to extend health benefits only to homosexuals because they represent such a tiny portion of the population. If benefits were extended to heterosexual domestic partners, the economic impact would be much higher. But Hollywood wouldn’t allow the bottom line to intrude on issues of fairness and equality, would it? Nahhhhhhhhh.

You would think, however, that those crusading on behalf of gay rights would be the first ones to notice the stark duplicity in these policies. I haven’t heard one word of dissent from those who have been most vociferous in condemning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Where are the sensitivity police now? Could it be their arguments were specious from the start?