Topeka ? Advocates on both sides of the same-sex marriage issue are watching to see if the current debate in the Kansas Legislature affects private businesses that already offer health insurance to the partners of their gay and lesbian employees.

Companies such as Boeing Co. and Sprint Corp. view domestic partner benefits as a way to recruit and retain employees in a competitive job market.

In Kansas, critics suggest a proposal adopted by the Senate to amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage — as well as civil unions and other legal recognition for gay couples — is broad enough to affect private companies and unmarried heterosexual couples sharing health insurance.

“I don’t know how much Kansas would restrict an individual company, but I’d hate to see it try,” said Roberta LaCrosse, a 32-year-old high school government teacher from Wichita covered by her male fiance’s employer, an aircraft parts maker.

Some advocates of banning gay marriage contend such fears are unfounded but acknowledge the questions could influence debates.

“These are scare tactics used by proponents of same-sex marriage,” said Mathew Staver, president for the Liberty Counsel, an Orlando, Fla., group opposing gay marriage or civil unions. “It’s an attempt to broaden the political base.”

Private industry

Seventeen states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, 13 approved only last year. Some, like Missouri, simply define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Others, like Nebraska, go further to prevent civil unions.

The Kansas proposal, besides defining marriage, would declare that the state shall recognize no other relationship as “entitling the parties to the rights or incidents of marriage.” The proposal is before the House, and supporters hope for a statewide vote April 5.

Proponents said the measure wouldn’t apply to private employers.

“I don’t think the state needs to be mandating on private industry anything like that,” said the Rev. Terry Fox, senior pastor at Wichita’s Immanuel Baptist Church, a leader of efforts supporting the amendment.

Still, when senators considered the proposal, critics said its language was unclear at best.

“I don’t know what would happen to our domestic partner benefits,” said Susan Fairchild, a 48-year-old Raytheon Aircraft employee who formed a gay and lesbian employees’ group several years ago to lobby successfully for such coverage.

She said legislators “aren’t thinking things through.”

‘Chilling effect’

Sen. John Vratil, an attorney who opposes the amendment, said he believes private companies could still offer domestic partner benefits if voters amended the constitution but, “That could have a chilling effect.”

Among Fortune 500 companies, 228 now offer domestic partner benefits, up from only 21 a decade ago, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay rights organization.

Sprint, which employs 17,000 people in the Kansas City area, announced in September that it would offer domestic partner benefits starting this year.

The company had been criticized previously by the Human Rights Campaign, but spokeswoman Jennifer Bosshardt said Sprint considered domestic partner benefits for years to recruit and retain employees and build business relationships.

Boeing, with 12,300 workers in the Wichita area, has offered health and dental coverage for same-sex partners since 2000 for similar reasons, spokesman Fred Solis said.

Neither company has entered the marriage debate. Bosshardt said Sprint focuses on telecommunications issues, and Solis said Boeing officials haven’t studied the marriage proposal.

Outside coverage

In Dayton, Ohio, NCR Corp., which manufactures automatic teller machines, cash registers and software, concluded an amendment with similar wording approved by that state’s voters last year didn’t affect the company, said spokesman John Hourigan. NCR, offering domestic partner benefits since 1998, opposed the measure anyway.

“Work place diversity is a business imperative for us,” Hourigan said.

But David Dranove, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Health Industry Market Economics, doubted domestic partner benefits will become universal without government intervention. While there’s market pressure for such benefits, he said, increasingly, companies worried about costs are increasing employees’ contributions — some to push workers into spouses’ outside coverage.

“If they’re trying to unload married couples, they’re obviously not anxious to take on the gay couples,” he said.

Meanwhile, whatever companies do, gays and lesbians worry about legislators.

Dave Greenbaum, a 34-year-old self-employed computer consultant in Lawrence, relies on his partner’s health insurance. Recently, Greenbaum said, he priced coverage for himself and learned he’d pay $500 to $600 a month for lesser benefits if his partner’s plan wouldn’t cover him.

“What would I do?” he said. “I just don’t know.”