Managing organizational compensation and equality benefits for same-sex married couples: A human resource dilemma

Sexual diversity is a fact of modern life. The challenges that human resources (HR) professionals face with changing workforce demographics include same-sex married couples' demands for equal benefits and compensation for themselves and their families. These demands present a serious dilemma for HR professionals in the 21st century. With the federal government's implementation of the Defense of Marriage Act and five states sanctioning same-sex marriage, the legal inequalities that exist between heterosexual and homosexual married couples has taken center stage in the political and social arenas. The purpose of the qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the lived perceptions of same-sex married couples in two organizations, along with the exploration of the dilemma that HR professionals face while dealing with federal state and local laws that prohibit same-sex married couples from receiving comparable benefits as their heterosexual counterparts. The study involved 14 participants who completed a one-on-one interview involving 6 open-ended questions. The use of a modified van Kaam method by Moustakas (1994) helped to analyze the collected data. The results of the study showed that because justice is a concern of the nation's government, and HR professionals play such an important role as the administrators of equality in the workplace, then HR professionals throughout the country should lobby the federal government for appropriate legislation to protect the rights of married partners, including single-sex married spouses and their families, from sexual discrimination in private and public institutions.