Woohoo! Quietly, last night, Obama issued a presidential memorandum asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make hospitals in the Medicaid/Medicare programs respect patients’ rights to receive the visitors they designate – including their same-sex partners.
From the text of the memorandum:
Yet every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides — whether in a sudden medical emergency or a prolonged hospital stay. Often, a widow or widower with no children is denied the support and comfort of a good friend. Members of religious orders are sometimes unable to choose someone other than an immediate family member to visit them and make medical decisions on their behalf. Also uniquely affected are gay and lesbian Americans who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives — unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated.
It’s a small step, of course. But it’s an important one. And it maybe indicates that Obama is going to chip away at the unequal status of same-sex couples bit by bit… which might be the only way he can do that without getting Congress involved.
Now if he’ll just negotiate the repeal of DOMA…
This is the President I voted for.
Agreed, Newt. This is one of the burdens on gay couples that I think is most painful and inhumane.
Now Obama just needs to get his act together on gay marriage.
As important as this is for queer couples, I love that the memorandum realizes that there are, in effect, many kinds of families, that aren’t necessarily linked by marriage or blood, and that those families are no less legitimate.
It’s absurd to me that this hasn’t been SOP. My imaginary Great-Aunt Tilly could visit me, willy-nilly, but Pilgrim couldn’t, even if I said “yes, please, HER”? Dumb.
There are no small steps when it comes to LGBT rights, imho. Every time we make progress, the ripple effects sweep us to the next step, and the next one…and one day, we’ll be there.
@PhD – Some people don’t understand that this applies to situations other than a gay couple (why, I don’t know, because Obama explicitly mentioned such situations). And so, I’ve seen multiple people say stuff like, “Well, I don’t think this is fair because then why can’t my girlfriend come visit me in the hospital?” The best was an MRA who claimed that this means Obama cares more about gay people than about fathers because bio-parents without parental rights can’t visit their offspring in the hospital without the permission of the custodial parent/legal guardian of the kid.
I had never thought of this and how it affects our gay community. This is terrible! So if your dying and your life partner isn’t directly related your shit out of luck?!?
The right to hold and comfort someone who is ill/scared/sick/dying isn’t just for blood relations! It’s a basic human right!
In an odd juxtaposition, my brother was in the hospital the day this was signed, with his partner, recovering from donating a kidney to said partner’s mother. Luckily he was at a hospital that treated him and his partner and family equally to a married couple, but if they had not been, that would have been pretty shitty. So this hit pretty close to home for me.
[...] getting some good press (among the blogosphere) for his latest executive order that allows queer families visitation in hospitals. [...]