{"id":1179,"date":"2004-10-19T05:30:48","date_gmt":"2004-10-19T13:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/10\/19\/more-on-denial-of-hospital-visitation\/"},"modified":"2004-10-19T05:30:48","modified_gmt":"2004-10-19T13:30:48","slug":"more-on-denial-of-hospital-visitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1179","title":{"rendered":"More on denial of hospital visitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trey at Daddy, Papa and Me<\/a> comments on whether or not hospitals really refuse to allow visitation by same-sex partners who are legally barred from marriage:<\/p>\n

Nearly everyone I know has a story of denied visitation rights, or ‘family’ swooping down and forcing health decisions against a partner’s wishes or contesting (often successfully) wills, or even walking into shared homes and taking things out. There almost isn’t a gay or lesbian couple (ok, i’m sure there are a few, somewhere) out there that doesn’t at least occasionally wonder or are concerned about one of their family members (we have one in our family) who would make life hell for the partner if their ‘family’ member became sick or died.. taking away health decisions or making life impossible after losing their loved one. The fact of the matter is, courts and law STILL overwhelmingly favors ‘blood’ relatives or ‘married’ spouses over the partners of gays and lesbians. Even wills and legal documents are superseded by ‘family’ law in many cases.<\/p>\n

And hospital rights? i have a first hand account of that.<\/p><\/div>\n

Go to Trey’s site <\/a>to read his story.<\/p>\n

One of the primary functions of marriage is to be able to legally make a family that courtrooms, police, hospitals and other public institutions are obliged to acknowlege. Right now, heterosexuals are able to point to their life partner and say “this person, this person here – s\/he’s now my closest family in the world, for all legal purposes” and (99.99% of the time) make it stick. Lesbians and gays don’t have that right. And real-life experience shows that the ability to write up a personalized contract is no match for the ability to form a legal family.<\/p>\n

Of course, the “non-homophobic” spokespeople of the anti-SSM movement – a handful of well-meaning intellectuals who are useful tools of the anti-SSM movement, but don’t actually have any influence within it – may object that domestic partnership laws could serve the same purpose.<\/p>\n

That’s an ironic argument, because recent ballot measures and other developments have made it clear that the leaders of the anti-SSM movement not only want to ban gay marriage, they want to ban domestic partnerships, civil unions, and any other attempt to “create or recognize a legal status” for same-sex couples (to quote Ohio’s ballot measure<\/a>). “Legal recognition <\/a>and the accompanying benefits afforded couples should be preserved for… one man and one woman.” They’re using opposition to same-sex marriage to camouflage their real goal, which is denying lesbians and gay families any rights at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trey at Daddy, Papa and Me comments on whether or not hospitals really refuse to allow visitation by same-sex partners who are legally barred from marriage: Nearly everyone I know has a story of denied visitation rights, or ‘family’ swooping … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}