May 13, 2009

Once Again, Proof That Domestic Partnerships (and Civil Unions) Are Not As Good As Marriage

So, I’m reading this article from the NYT about the way hospitals treat same-sex couples, and I expect to find a few examples of grossly unfair treatment — the usual “Partner A was not allowed to be with Partner B while Partner B was dying” — and I expect the stories to come solely from Louisiana, or Alabama, or any number of other overtly gay-hostile states.

As expected, the NYT summarizes the heartbreaking tragedy that befell Washington couple Janice Langbehn, Lisa Pond, and three of their children, made even worse by the cruel homophobia of a Florida hospital:

A woman from Washington collapsed while on vacation in Miami. Although her partner had an advanced health care directive, hospital officials told her she wasn’t a family member under Florida law. The woman spent hours talking with hospital administrators to prove that the document from her home state was, in fact, still valid in Florida. Although she eventually prevailed, her partner’s condition deteriorated and the woman died. Because of the problem, the children the patient had been raising with her partner weren’t able to see her before she died.

What I didn’t expect to see was this story from California:

A Bakersfield, Calif., couple rushed their child to the emergency room with a 104 degree fever. The women were registered domestic partners, but the hospital only allowed the biological mother to stay with tit’he child. Although hospitals typically allow both parents to stay with a child during treatment, in this case, the second parent was forced to stay in the waiting room.

Or this one from Oregon:

An Oregon man whose registered domestic partner was unconscious was told to leave the hospital room because it was time for family members to make decisions about his care. He was forced to plead his case before hospital administrators before being allowed to stay with his partner, who was dying.

Bookmark this, folks, because you’re going to find it very handy the next time some Anti-Gay (or just some well-meaning ignoramus) declares that domestic partnerships (or civil unions) are exactly the same as marriage, save for the word.

And here I sit, thinking about how I need to print out California’s domestic partnership application so my wife and I can get as re-hitched as the law allows, in case the state decides in its infinite foolishness to forcibly divorce us — which it may do any day now.

Anyway, read the rest of the article. You probably won’t learn much else you didn’t already know (although it’s great that the NYT is putting this issue out in front of a lot of non-gay eyeballs), except that the 2009 Healthcare Equality Index — “a joint project of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association” which “rates 166 U.S. healthcare facilities on their policies and practices related to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community” — has been released.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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