Fresno Hospital Bars Lesbian From Visiting Partner And Giving Advice About Her Treatment, ACLU and NCLR Urge Hospital To Adopt Policies Respecting Same-Sex Relationships
“We just couldn’t believe this was happening to us. This was the nightmare that we hoped we’d never have to live through,” said Teresa Rowe, who grew up in Clovis, California, but now lives in the Bay Area with her partner of four years, Kristin Orbin. “Unfortunately, because Kristin suffers from epilepsy, trips to the hospital are pretty common for us, which is why we filled out the legal paper work to make sure I would be able to be with her and make emergency decisions about her care. But the hospital wouldn’t let me see Kristen and ignored my advice about her treatment. They ended up giving her the exact medication I repeatedly asked them not to give her.”
On May 29, 2009, Rowe and Orbin attended the “Meet in the Middle” rally in support of marriage for same-sex couples in Fresno. After the couple completed a 14-mile march in 90 degree heat, Orbin, who suffers from epilepsy, collapsed in a seizure. The couple experienced hostility from the ambulance driver, but Rowe was ultimately allowed to accompany Orbin to Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno. However, when the couple got the hospital, the driver would not allow Rowe to accompany Orbin into the emergency room even though Orbin had been in and out of consciousness, and Rowe was familiar with her medical history and care.
Rowe repeatedly asked hospital employees to allow her to see Orbin and talk to a physician about her care but was refused. She volunteered to have Orbin’s legal paperwork naming Rowe as her health care agent faxed to the hospital but was told that it wouldn’t do any good. When she asked that she at least be allowed to pass along the message that Orbin not be given the drug Ativan, she was told the message would be conveyed. If the message was given to those treating Orbin, it was ignored because Orbin was given the drug, which she didn’t need and which causes her unnecessary pain. Meanwhile, when she was awake, Orbin was also asking to be allowed to see Rowe. Although they were both told that no visitors were allowed in the area where Orbin was being treated, other patients were receiving guests. After being separated for several hours, Orbin finally saw her doctor. She complained to him, and Rowe was eventually allowed to be with her.
“Until the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, Kristen and Teresa were planning to get married. In this climate, hospitals must be especially diligent to protect same-sex couples from discrimination,” said Elizabeth Gill, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. “As these events so painfully demonstrate, no matter what hoops same-sex couples jump through to protect their relationships, these kinds of horrible things will continue to happen as long as couples are denied the recognition and respect that only comes with marriage.”
The letter sent by the ACLU and NCLR charges that it was a violation of state law for the hospital to discriminate against the couple based on their sexual orientation, as well as to refuse to recognize Rowe’s legal authority, which was authorized by Orbin’s advance health care directive. The letter also notes that hospitals must post and follow a patient’s bill of rights that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and grants patients the ability to designate visitors of their choosing and to decide who is able to make emergency decision about their care. The letter urges Community Medical Centers immediately to affirm their commitment to inclusive and sensitive medical care for LGBT patients, and to take a number of steps to carry out that commitment.
“Discrimination in healthcare settings is still far too common for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” said Jason Schneider, MD, President of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA). “No one is served when partners are barred from visitation and kept from participating in conversations about their loved one’s care. It’s bad for doctors who are kept from potentially life threatening information, it’s bad for partners who are left waiting hopelessly in the waiting rooms and it’s especially traumatic for patients who need the love and support that only their partners can provide to help them through health care emergencies.”
A copy of the letter, which gives the hospital until June 22nd to respond, is available at http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/discrim/39854res20090615.html.
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In RI, some wary as tide of gay marriage rises
PROVIDENCE – From a cramped office in the middle of the smallest state in the nation, Christopher Plante is determined to prove that Rhode Island has not been cornered by the advance of same-sex marriage across the rest of New England.
“When I look at a real map of the United States, we’re actually not alone here,” said Plante, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex unions. “This is not the United States of New England.”
But supporters and even some opponents expect that Rhode Island will legalize same-sex marriage, although they say that legalization is two or three years away.
Massachusetts and Connecticut legalized same-sex marriage as a result of judicial decisions in 2003 and 2008, while Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire followed this spring by legislative action.
The slower pace in Rhode Island, where the state Senate voted last week to allow same-sex partners to make funeral arrangements, has frustrated some local activists, many of whom rallied outside the State House in Providence last weekend to call for immediate equality.
But others say that legalization by 2012, a goal advocates set last year for securing same-sex marriage in all New England states, would put Rhode Island at the front of the pack nationally. In the rest of the country, only Iowa allows same-sex couples to marry.
“They still have a chance to be part of the vanguard,” said attorney Karen L. Loewy, the Rhode Island point person for GLAD, which won the lawsuits in Massachusetts and Connecticut that legalized same-sex marriage in those states. “Rhode Island is well on its way.”
See In RI, some wary as tide of gay marriage rises
Boston Globe
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Women Inmates Segregated For “Looking Gay”
Virginia’s largest women’s prison rounded up inmates who had loose-fitting clothes, short hair or otherwise masculine looks and placed them in a separate cell block. That’s according to prisoners and corrections officers who talked to The Associated Press about the practice. They say dozens were moved in an attempt to split up relationships and curb illegal sexual activity at the 1,200-inmate Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy. Some straight women were sent to the wing strictly because of their appearance. Civil rights advocates called the moves unconstitutional punishment for “looking gay.” Fluvanna Warden Barbara Wheeler denied that any housing decisions were made based on looks or sexual orientation, and said doing so would be discriminatory. Inmates said life in the so-called “butch wing” or “locker room wing” wasn’t much different than other units. But both inmates and employees said the unit was locked down more often than others, and the women said they were verbally harassed by staff.
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Mike Gin, Redondo Beach’s Chinese-American, Rotarian, Gay Mayor
After months of living legal limbo, Redondo Beach Mayor Mike Gin’s marriage was finally declared legal several days ago by the California Supreme Court. But marital validation was no tonic for Gin, who wasn’t celebrating the landmark decisions on same-sex marriage issued last week by the California Supreme Court.
“It’s a bittersweet feeling,” he admits. “My husband and I are thrilled about that part of the ruling that affects us, but there are many other couples now who cannot share in the happiness that we were able to experience on our wedding day. I’m hoping that someday all of us can experience that same happiness.”
Gin and his husband, Christopher Kreidel, were part of the pool of approximately 18,000 gay people married after the California Supreme Court ruled a year ago that same-sex marriages were legal, but before the Proposition 8 vote last fall banned same-sex marriage.
Despite the ruling early last week upholding Prop. 8, he is not discouraged. He notes that Prop. 22, the long-standing gay-marriage ban overturned by the courts last May, passed in 2000 with 60 percent of the vote, while Prop. 8 passed with only 52 percent.
“I think it is still a very strong social issue on both sides in our society right now,” he says. “But the voting numbers show that as a society we’re moving in the right direction.”
Gin is an unusual public official in that he is gay, married, Asian-American — and popular at a time when California politicians are reaching new lows in approval-rating polls. After serving eight years on the Redondo City Council and four as mayor, Gin has developed a reputation as a classic old-school politician who listens patiently to residents, considers a wide array of arguments and interests before making a decision, and goes out of his way to avoid confrontation.
See Mike Gin, Redondo Beach’s Chinese-American, Rotarian, Gay Mayor
LA Weekly
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Sotomayor makes rounds on Capitol Hill
(Washington) Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is racing through a crucial set of meetings with senators on Capitol Hill, working to reassure Republicans who worry she’d bring ethnic and gender bias to her decisions.
Sotomayor, who would be the high court’s first Hispanic and third woman, is telling senators in both …
Illinois gay union legislation stresses the civil aspect
Rev. Frank Senn of Evanston wouldn’t mind if Illinois became the sixth state to recognize same-sex civil unions as binding commitments in the eyes of the law.
But the Evangelical Lutheran pastor would object if his church became the next Protestant denomination to bless same-sex unions as binding commitments in the eyes of God.
“There’s a difference between what is ordered in civil society and what the church can do under the Gospel,” said the pastor, whose son married another man in California before same-sex marriages were banned by the Proposition 8 referendum in November. “I think civil society has its own authority to make whatever social accommodations that seem good to society. We can only act on the authority of the word of God.”
Both decisions hang in the balance. This weekend, Illinois legislators could vote on a bill that would legalize same-sex civil unions and give same-sex couples the same “basic rights” as married couples. See Illinois gay union legislation stresses the civil aspect Chicago Tribune * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Gay & Lesbian community responds to Gov. Gibbons veto
Monday, Governor Jim Gibbons vetoed SB 283-the Domestic Partner Bill that Revises provisions governing the rights of domestic partners. SB 283 would establish a Domestic Partner registry through the Secretary of State’s office where couples, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, could register their relationships with the state and enjoy the protections granted to spouses under Nevada Revised Statutes. State Senator David Parks introduced the bill in an effort to provide same-gender and opposite-gender couples the legal protection and obligations for one another not otherwise allowed under current law in Nevada.
Gibbons writes that he vetoed the bill based on his opinion that it violates Section 21 of Article 1 of the Nevada Constitution. He surmises the will of the voters expressed in Question 2-which amended the Nevada Constitution in 2002, to define Marriage as, “Only a marriage between a male and female person shall be recognized and given effect in this state,” without providing any basis for his opinion. Legal opinions expressed by experts in legislative testimony during hearings on SB 283, and the opinion issued by the Legislative Council Bureau contradict his reasoning. Gibbons also claims in his letter that couples can contract privately through “estate planning…living wills..and amendments to leases and deeds of trust.” “If legal contracts were as simple as Governor Gibbons claims, more people would enter into them-same-gender couples or otherwise. The process of drawing up legal documents is expensive, time consuming and easily challenged in court. There is no guarantee that these contracts will stand up in court. LGBT couples seek only to provide security for their partners and families and that the decisions they make for one another will actually be binding,” said, Jennifer Bolton, Center Board Vice President. See Gay & Lesbian community responds to Gov. Gibbons veto
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Mayor quits job for gay illegal immigrant he loves
It was, simply put, the most stunning abdication since King Edward VIII in 1936 gave up the British throne for Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American socialite.
Only two weeks after being elected to serve his fourth term, Mayor J.W. Lown of San Angelo submitted his resignation letter Tuesday from an undisclosed location in Mexico.
No, being mayor of San Angelo is not exactly the same as being the King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, but the reason for Lown’s abdication is the same as Edward’s.
Love.
What made it stunning wasn’t the status of Lown’s office, which pays $600 a year, but the status of his lover.
Lown fell for an illegal Mexican immigrant.
A man.
Lown told the San Angelo Standard-Times he had fallen for the man in March, after he had already filed for re-election. The man came to the U.S. five years ago to study at Angelo State University.
It was unclear whether he had a student visa, but if he did it apparently had expired.
Lown told the Standard-Times he chose not to take the oath of office while “aiding and assisting” a person who was illegally in the country.
Lown had been an extraordinarily popular mayor. Only 32 years old, he was elected in 2003 as the city’s youngest mayor. Serving in an office that inevitably requires decisions that accumulate enemies, he managed to get re-elected three times with increasing margins of victory each time. Two weeks ago he defeated two challengers by garnering 89 percent of the vote.
See Mayor quits job for gay illegal immigrant he loves Houston Chronicle
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Jim Gibbons, In Midst Of Messy Divorce, Plans To Veto Gay Partners .Bill to Stand Tall For Traditional Marriage!
The Nevada legislature has successfully passed two gay rights bills, one that outlaws job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and another that establishes domestic partnerships for gay couples.
But Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons has said he will veto the domestic partnership bill, which would give same-sex couples equal rights to married partners in areas like estate planning, medical decisions, community property and child custody.
“The governor believes that government has no business in your medicine chest or your bedroom,” spokesperson Daniel Burns said. With good reason: Gibbons who filed for divorce in 2008, allegedly had having an affair with playboy model Leslie Durant, as well as sending more than 860 text messages to another woman, Kathy Karrasch, from his state-owned cell phone. When Gibbons was running for governor, he was accused of sexually assaulting a cocktail waitress.
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Marriage no longer an issue for many in Massachusetts
WHITINSVILLE, Mass., – Twenty years after he met the love of his life, nearly five years after their wedding helped make history, it took a nasty bout of pneumonia for Gary Chalmers to fully appreciate the blessings of marriage.
“I was out of work for eight weeks, spent a week in the hospital,” Chalmers said. “That was the first time I really felt thankful for the sense of the security we had, with Rich there, talking with the physicians, helping make decisions. … It really made a difference.”
At stake was the most basic recognition of marital bonds — something most spouses take for granted. But until May 17, 2004, when Chalmers and Richard Linnell were among a surge of same-sex couples marrying in Massachusetts, it was legally unavailable to American gays and lesbians.
Since that day, four other states — Connecticut in 2008, and Iowa, Vermont and Maine this year — have legalized same-sex marriage, and more may follow soon. A measure just approved by New Hampshire’s legislature awaits the governor’s decision on whether to sign. But Massachusetts was the first, providing a five-year record with which to gauge the consequences.
See Marriage no longer an issue for many in Massachusetts
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