President Barack Obama will sign a memorandum Wednesday granting some benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, two senior administration officials said.

It will provide some health care benefits, but will stop short of full health coverage, the officials said. Details of the benefits were not immediately available.

The signing, which will take place in the Oval Office, follows sharp criticism of the president over a Justice Department motion filed last week in support of the Defense of Marriage Act -- which effectively bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions by defining marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband wife" and a spouse as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."

The motion used the government's interest in opposing incestuous marriages to support its position against same-sex marriage.

Gay and lesbian advocates have also faulted the Obama administration for not moving to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that bars officials from asking about a service member's sexual orientation but also bars the service member from revealing it, and allows the dismissal of a service member if a same-sax orientation is discovered.

"There's so little we can say until we know what it is," said Carisa Cunningham, a spokeswoman for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, a legal advocacy group that is challenging Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court in Massachusetts.


Section 3 prevents the federal government from giving Social Security and other protections to same-sex married couples.

"Laws have to change ... and in particular, the Defense of Marriage Act needs to change, so whatever the few benefits that the president as an employer can grant, there won't be a lot of them," Cunningham said.

President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law in 1996.

Obama rankled gay advocates in January when he selected mega-church pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Warren, in an interview with Beliefnet, likened homosexuality to bestiality and incest. He also supported California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state.

During the Warren controversy, Obama -- who frequently spoke out in favor of gay and lesbian rights during the campaign but has said he opposes same-sex marriage -- declared himself "a fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans."