Faculty members at state-owned universities could be the first in the Keystone State to receive health benefits for their domestic partners.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education reached a tentative contract agreement with the faculty union to add domestic-partner health insurance to the available fringe benefits the first week of July.

SHHE’s Board of Governors and the union are expected to vote on the contract in the next few weeks, said Ken Marshall, SHEE media-relations manager.

“The union has to vote first and once they do, our board will vote,” Marshall said. “It will take about a month to get all the materials out on the proposed contract and to schedule a vote. It’s not likely to happen until late August.”

Should the contract be ratified, domestic-partner benefits will go into effect immediately, making professors at 14 universities the first unionized Pennsylvania state employees to receive such benefits.

Conservative groups like the American Family Association of Pennsylvania lobbied to block the benefits not just for state-school union faculty, but for all state union workers.

“The promotion of domestic-partner benefits is not about good business, but about bowing under the pressure exerted from those trying to equate same-sex partnerships to marriage,” stated AFA president Diane Gramely in a release. “They are not the same and any business that works to undermine marriage will ultimately suffer the financial consequences.”

Marshall said the added benefits will cost the state about $350,000.

“We looked at other schools in the state system of higher education that offer domestic-partner benefits and determined that only about 1-2 percent of faculty and administration are expected to take advantage of the benefits,” he said. “It’s actually a very small percentage.”

“We’ve waited a long time for it, but it’s about more than the money,” Rita Drapkin, an out Indiana University of Pennsylvania tenured professor told the Associated Press. “It’s about not being second-class citizens.”

The previous four-year contract, which covered the 5,500 members of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties included domestic-partner health benefits, but was contingent upon all state union employees receiving the benefits.

“We voted on this four years ago and anticipated that by now the state would have extended those benefits — but it never did. So it will be changed as soon as the contract is ratified,” Marshall said.

Pat Heilman, president of the faculty union, told the Associated Press that the lack of same-sex partner benefits hurts the state system’s faculty as a whole by making it difficult to fill faculty vacancies and turning off perspective employees in same-sex relationships.

“It’s a larger competitive problem than people think,” he said.

Same-sex partner benefits are already available at Penn State, Pittsburgh and Temple universities.

The contract impacts faculty at Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester universities of Pennsylvania.