If you go down a list of health-care providers in Western Washington and ask someone from human resources if they provide domestic-partner benefits for employees, you will get the same answer from many of them. Last December, David Tsung spent some time on the phone asking that very question. Virginia Mason Medical Center? Check. Group Health Cooperative? Check. Harborview Medical Center? Check.

However, Highline Medical Center in Burien, where Tsung works as a pharmacist, is—to his chagrin—one of a few hospitals in Western Washington that does not offer some type of domestic-partner health benefits for its employees. Tsung is gay.

Adding insult to injury, the latest round of bargaining agreements between unions and the hospital finished in November and, for the first time, spouses of Highline employees will have medical coverage. Gays were excluded from the big win: Same-sex domestic partners will not get coverage.

Petitioning his union and Highline's new CEO, Tsung is now leading an urgent one-man grassroots campaign for domestic-partner benefits. His partner's medical insurance will expire when he leaves the military later this year.

"I don't want to give the wrong impression; I like working for the hospital," says Tsung, a pharmacist at Highline since 2004. "I want to give them a chance to catch up. I feel I might be an unheard voice if I don't speak up."

According to Tsung's research, Virginia Mason, Group Health, Harborview, Valley Medical Center, Swedish Medical Center, Tacoma General Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, and Snohomish Health District all offer a domestic-partner coverage plan. Highline Medical Group, a separate but affiliated clinic to Highline Medical Center, also offers domestic-partner benefits. Even Rite Aid Pharmacy does, Tsung says. Annoyingly to Tsung, and ironically, Highline obviously provides service to domestic partners for its patient care. (While verifying Tsung's work, The Stranger learned that Providence Everett Medical Center and Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton also offer domestic-partner benefits. St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma does not.)

Tsung was unhappy with the response he got from the human resources department in mid-November and wrote a letter to Highline CEO Mark Benedum on January 7, stating: "Having recently discovered Highline's refusal to extend its employee benefits package to include same-sex domestic partnerships, I am disappointed in the Medical Center's administration and in the Board of Trustees' insincerity toward its own operational philosophies. The movement toward, and my request for, domestic-partnership benefits in the workplace is rooted in the egalitarian principle [of] equal... benefits."

Highline spokesperson Mara Burke says, "We would certainly be prepared to consider [domestic-partner benefits] in the future. We are interested in responding to the needs that are raised by staff or their representatives."

Tsung, did, in fact, try to get his union to take up the fight.

Indeed, last year, when the union was working out a deal for family coverage, Tsung went to the union and raised the issue of domestic partnerships. However, while the union wrapped up its deal to secure coverage on behalf of married couples, it didn't bring domestic partnerships to the table.

"We're committed to keep the fight going for people whether they're legally married or domestic partners," said David Fleishman, director of negotiations for United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), Local 21. "Sometimes you can't get everything in the first shot. That's the case here." The UFCW's contract with Highline will be up for renegotiation in three years. UFCW represents 30,000 workers in health care, retail, and other industries statewide, including 226 (techies, dieticians, and pharmacists) of the 1,200 total employees at Highline.

For Tsung, a University of Maryland graduate, the issue is more than personal; it is philosophical. To him, it is a matter of equal work for equal pay. As Tsung mentioned in a lengthy letter to his CEO, if he's not getting benefits that his coworkers are, he is technically getting paid less for the same work.

Tsung and his partner are not yet serious enough to be living together, but he sees it going that direction (because of the military's not-so-discreet antigay policy, The Stranger is keeping Tsung's partner anonymous).

"I would've done it either way without a partner, but I hope he is the beneficiary," said Tsung.