(CNSNews.com) - A national homosexual advocacy organization has slashed the funding for domestic partner health benefits offered to its employees, despite aggressively lobbying corporations and government to expand their own domestic partnership benefits.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) decided to cut in half its coverage of health insurance premiums for domestic partners of its employees, calling the premiums "prohibitively expensive"

Peter LaBarbera, a senior policy analyst with the Culture and Family Institute, a division of Concerned Women for America, called the NGLTF's decision to scale back its domestic partner benefits "hypocrisy."

"The NGLTF is demanding of others what it can't provide for its own employees," LaBarbera told CNSNews.com.

"The fact is they cut benefits because it's too expensive and that is one of the reasons we shouldn't have domestic partnership benefits," LaBarbera said.

Several months after assuming her position in 2001, NGLTF executive director Lorri Jean recommended the reduction in health coverage for domestic partners as part of a cost cutting effort, because she saw them as "prohibitively expensive," according to the Washington Blade newspaper.

According to the March 14, 2003 issue of the Washington Blade:

"... a 100 percent benefit plan for domestic partners could not be sustained, Jean said, at a time when the group had a $500,000 debt, including an outstanding loan of $300,000.

Following a heated staff meeting, the staff's union members voted to back down from the 100 percent partner benefit demand, settling instead for a 50 percent payment plan for partners staff members."

The NGLTF, upset that conservative groups are now making an issue of the domestic partner benefit cutback, issued a press release denouncing the "miscommunication campaign tactics of [the] right wing." But the group did not dispute the fact of the case.

The NGLTF's March 13 press release read in part, ... "The anti-gay right-wing group Concerned Women for America quoted Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan who used incomplete information reported in the ... Washington Blade."

When asked to explain exactly what the group considered "incomplete information" in the Washington Blade report, NGLTF media spokesman Sheri Lunn stated only that, "Our press release stands as is."

The NGLTF press release notes that the group still offers health benefits to domestic partners and urges other business to do the same.

"NGLTF stands proudly behind its incredibly competitive and generous benefits package and challenges businesses and organizations to stand up to the right wing lobbyists and do the right thing by providing equal coverage for all employees regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity," the release stated.

LaBarbera called the NGLTF a group on "the fringe of the fringe in the gay movement" and said the organization prides itself on taking what it considers principled stands within the homosexual movement.

"They don't even support [proposals] that don't include transgender[ed] people. This is a group that demands purity," LaBarbera noted.

"And the reality is they had to cave in on purity because domestic partner benefits cost too much for all their gay employees," he added.

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