by Joe LaMuraglia

We just received a statement from American Honda Manufacturing of Alabama regarding the article we posted earlier today. It reads:

Statement by Honda Manufacturing of Alabama, LLC
August 21, 2008
The health and safety of the more than 4,500 associates at Honda Manufacturing of Alabama (HMA) is the most important priority in the management of our business. Accordingly, HMA offers health-care coverage that is competitive in our industry and that addresses our associates’ needs in balance with other factors, such as rapidly escalating program costs.
The plan includes domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples. Our current benefits program does not provide coverage for third-party involvement (such as surrogate motherhood or the use of sperm or egg banks) regardless of whether the covered couple is heterosexual or same-sex.

According the above, LGBT couples have been covered by domestic partner health insurance since January 2008 but neither LGBT couples or heterosexual couples are eligible for fertility treatment.
When I contacted Brian Armentrout, the Communications Director for The American Fertility Association to ask where they sourced their information, he stated that the following paragraph was printed directly from the AMA benefit web site:

“Effective January 1, 2008, Honda Manufacturing of Alabama requests that Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) exclude domestic partners (same sex partners) from ART benefits including diagnostic services related to fertility/infertility that have a fertility or infertility diagnosis”.

He provided printed proof from the BCBS Alabama web site that shows the paragraph above.
We’ve contacted AMA to clarify but we’ve yet to hear back from them. Let’s hope it was simply an oversight.

We applaud American Honda for modifying their policies to include domestic partner benefits at their sales and marketing arm in California and at their manufacturing facility in Alabama. Unfortunately, not all American Honda companies offer these benefits in the U.S. so they are not on the Gaywheels.com gay-friendly list, yet.