Visitation Rights
Apr. 16th, 2010 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaObama extends hospital visitation rights to gays and lesbians
... I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad about this.
I mean on the surface, it's a no brainer. I'm very happy about it. It's about time. The way gays and lesbians have been treated by hospitals has been appalling.
On the other hand, I expect that any minute now, we'll hear a lot of ignorant howling from the Catholic hospitals whinging about how they're being forced to love thy neighbor or something.
Also, I'm worried that on some level this will hurt gay marriage. Marriage confers a lot of things to heterosexuals that domestic partnerships do not. We pay $6,000/year more in federal taxes than a married couple would, and there are major issues with inheritance, adoption, child custody and guardianship, insurance, credit, home-buying, etc, etc, etc.
But a lot of those have a lot of wiggle room for the arrogantly ignorant mind. Many of them are money related and if you're small minded, that can easily translate to gays being 'greedy' because we would like the same benefits from society that every other couple gets, and one subjects pertaining to child welfare, their cries of ignorance are already much too familiar so I won't bother covering them.
This issue, hospital visitation, was major. It's a subject was an incredibly powerful one in defense of gay marriage. You have to be a pretty serious jerk to say that someone cannot have their loved ones there holding their hand when they are staring in the face of death. The behavior of the right wing in hospitals was cruelty in the extreme, and for all of those people facing this situation, I am indeed extremely grateful to see this legislation pass.
I'm just concerned that it also means that more people will now be able to turn a blind eye to the rest of the discrimination that we face.
... I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad about this.
I mean on the surface, it's a no brainer. I'm very happy about it. It's about time. The way gays and lesbians have been treated by hospitals has been appalling.
On the other hand, I expect that any minute now, we'll hear a lot of ignorant howling from the Catholic hospitals whinging about how they're being forced to love thy neighbor or something.
Also, I'm worried that on some level this will hurt gay marriage. Marriage confers a lot of things to heterosexuals that domestic partnerships do not. We pay $6,000/year more in federal taxes than a married couple would, and there are major issues with inheritance, adoption, child custody and guardianship, insurance, credit, home-buying, etc, etc, etc.
But a lot of those have a lot of wiggle room for the arrogantly ignorant mind. Many of them are money related and if you're small minded, that can easily translate to gays being 'greedy' because we would like the same benefits from society that every other couple gets, and one subjects pertaining to child welfare, their cries of ignorance are already much too familiar so I won't bother covering them.
This issue, hospital visitation, was major. It's a subject was an incredibly powerful one in defense of gay marriage. You have to be a pretty serious jerk to say that someone cannot have their loved ones there holding their hand when they are staring in the face of death. The behavior of the right wing in hospitals was cruelty in the extreme, and for all of those people facing this situation, I am indeed extremely grateful to see this legislation pass.
I'm just concerned that it also means that more people will now be able to turn a blind eye to the rest of the discrimination that we face.
