Well – Kept From a Dying Partner’s Bedside – NYTimes.com:
“When a loved one is in the hospital, you naturally want to be at the bedside. But what if the staff won’t allow it?
That’s what Janice Langbehn, a social worker in Lacey, Wash., says she experienced when her partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, collapsed with an aneurysm during a Florida vacation and was taken to a Miami trauma center. She died there, at age 39, as Ms. Langbehn tried in vain to persuade hospital officials to let her visit, along with the couple’s adopted children.
‘I have this deep sense of failure for not being at Lisa’s bedside when she died,’ Ms. Langbehn said. ‘How I get over that I don’t know, or if I ever do.’
The case, now the subject of a federal lawsuit in Florida, is being watched by gay rights groups, which say same-sex partners often report being excluded from a patient’s room because they aren’t ‘real’ family members.”
(Via NY Times.)
This is precisely why I’m for gay civil rights. Despite all the legal documents that should have had the force of law and protected their rights, these couples and no doubt many others were denied basic human treatment. Religious opponents of gay civil rights of course are varied, some honest objectors and others “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” To all of them I say to clothe such hate, such as what we see here, in faith and conscience is unequivocally wrong, no evil. In the words of my Lord:
A Tree and Its Fruit
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, no can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.