I love my mom dearly and I’ve had a continuing fear about something that our legal system could do to her.
I’ve known for a long time about the horrible laws and hospital rules aimed at gays and lesbians to punish them for being loving human beings, that could also impact people like my mom. This post on “The Swivet” (also see the above post) reinforced my nightmare.
Under the old laws my sister and I are horrible children for moving thousands of miles away from my mother, even though she has dozens of close friends and is quite happy keeping in contact with us through the phone and email.
Under the old laws, hospitals could bar everyone who wasn’t immediate family from visiting a sick person. So the fact that my sister and I live in different states from my mom would mean if she were to get a prolonged illness the only company that the hospital was forced to let her see would be the two of us when we could travel up to see her. So there was a real possibility that she could die alone with all her possessions taken by the state. All due to laws aimed at punishing gays and lesbians for the audacity to pick a partner out of love instead of peer pressure.
With the new regulation that President Obama signed my nightmare is relieved a bit. Now a person can sign a statement saying who they want to visit them in the hospital so not only does this regulation give partners of gays and lesbians more rights than that persons household pet as opposed to less, it also gives basic human rights to people whose family has moved away or died.
Now if my mom gets a prolonged illness, she can have one of her many friends visit her in hospital and give her a link to the outside world. I don’t have to worry about her being locked away not given the minimum shred of human dignity that a human being is entitled to.
Allowing sick people this minimum human right is well worth it, even if it means allowing people to go unpunished for the crime of not being a sociopath and actually loving someone.
So to anyone who don’t approve of this new regulation and think that people whose families don’t live in same town should be made to sacrifice their basic human dignity in order to punish gays and lesbians for crime of picking a partner out of love, I say, “Shut-up Stupid, everyone has the right to have someone with them in their final hours.”
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2 comments:
Why in the world should someone object to this? Many people are much closer to others than they are to family?
Hear! Hear!
Well stated! It is a sad commentary on our country that the President had to enact a law in order for this to happen. For countless reason, many nuclear families now live far apart and often cannot be with loved ones in a crisis.
It is also absurd that Gays and Lesbians who are partners, some with Powers of Attorney, have been denied access to hospital visits. At last there is justice on at least this front.
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