And another week is history. Before they’re used to wrap virtual fish, here are your headlines:
- Goldman Is Charged With Subprime Fraud — Looks like somebody might actually have to pay for this mess, or for their part in it. Wall Street doesn’t like the news, though.
- Volcanic ash: Flight chaos to continue into weekend — Mother Nature continues to mess with Europe.
- China quake death toll ‘passes 1,000’ — What is it with all this deadly seismic activity? We can’t blame this on global warming. So what is it? Should Jor-El warn us all to start building spaceships?
- Obama: Hospitals Must Grant Same-Sex Visitations — Just in case the Culture Warriors didn’t have enough to fight about.
- ATM scam robs S.C. residents — Who’da thunk S.C. crooks could be this clever?
- Girl Wakes From Coma Speaking New Language — Thought you might like a little change of pace, for the mix. Coatian girl had just started to study German in school, but now she’s fluent in it — and has to have an interpreter to speak to her parents (which most parents of teens could use, come to think of it).
“Obama: Hospitals Must Grant Same-Sex Visitations — Just in case the Culture Warriors didn’t have enough to fight about.”
Because it would be soooo horrible for dying people to be allowed to have visits from their significant others.
Who said that? Not I. I only said it sounds like another thing for people to scream at each other about.
Now that you make me think about it for a moment, though, I’m wondering — to what extent does this address an actual problem? Personally, I’ve never had any trouble walking into a hospital and going straight to the room of the person I’m going to see without anyone asking me who I am.
I suppose if someone is in ICU or something there might be tighter rules, but hey, I don’t expect to waltz in and out of an ICU. Maybe they shouldn’t let ANYbody in…
So… to what extent is this a culture-war thing that Obama is making a statement to a part of his base that’s ticked because he hasn’t placed their agenda first and foremost, so that they can say, “Yay, we won one!” and the other side can shake with rage and plot its revenge, and the ranting just goes on and on…
Which frankly makes me tired, because I think there are bigger issues to fight about.
Whoa– *I* never said *you* did. *I* try to only ascribe negative positions to you if you actually take them.
It’s a huge problem. Parents who are next of kin barring the same sex SO because they cannot get over the absence of grandchildren or their own bigotry. Especially in the kinds of environments where it really gets critical (does it matter so much if you just had minor surgery?), like ICUs and emergency care–they do restrict who can visit. It first became a big deal as the AIDS crisis took hold, and continues to be so.
People are dying or in serious condition and their most loved ones cannot visit them because the next of kin blocks it.
So… We’re talking about taking sides in a bitter, painful family fight here.
Ya know, there are about a gazillion thing I’d rather see the POTUS spend his limited political capital on.
How on Earth did anything like this become a federal case? It almost makes the Tea Partiers’ case about an overintrusive, meddling gummint. Disturbing…
We’re talking about removing official barriers to the wishes of the sick or dying person. We won’t let them get married; At least them them have the comfort of the person they choose as they lay near death.
It should not be controversial to make it an adult’s right to choose whom he wishes to include in his deathbed scene.
It’s really easy for you to “not see” this problem because you were allowed to marry the person whom you loved. If her parents had disliked you and wanted to bar you from her hospital room, they could not. Why shouldn’t gays and lesbians have that right?
Now, maybe you are beginning to understand what is at the heart of most Tea Party protests/protesters and their growing support.
We continue to hear the mantra about staying out of our bedrooms and/or personal choices, which I wholeheartedly agree with.
With that in mind, I would appreciate it if the government would kindly stay the hell out of my kitchen. That is coming next. Count on it.
The same-sex visitation law is one of those little things (like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) that Obama could do to make the country a better place.
It should be up to a patient as to who can visit, not the hospital. And if the patient is over 18 and the partner can prove some type of longstanding relationship, then there should be no issue.
This was one of the issues that helped me “evolve” (i.e. admit I was wrong) on gay issues. I’d be a hypocritical libertarian to think there should be two sets of rules.
God bless you, Doug! What a nice post!
I would say that there should be no requirement to prove the tenure of the relationship–there are probably some sorts of medical/physical limitations on the number of people who could be allowed in a space, and the patient can specify who they are.
It’s the sort of a priori judgments that I rail against and Brad seems to have no issue with. Set the standards based on objective criteria related to the situation: A person needs to be able to lift x lbs. A patient may have two visitors. A clear, objective head is needed in this job. An intuitive, emotionally connected person is required for this job. All those other restrictions based on sex, race, religion, etc., need to go away.
Ah, but that’s the trouble, see?
If you say, “Same-sex (partners, friends, whatever) automatically win arguments about death-bed visitation over family members,” then you’ve set an absolute standard based on whether one is in, or claims to be in, such a relationship with the patient. What an absurd thing to do, from the Oval Office, without considering the circumstances of an individual case.
What if the couple were in an on-again, off-again relationship in which the would-be visitor was abusive to the patient, and the family knows that? Do they get no say, by presidential fiat?
This is a political statement the president is making — one that could lead to greater compassion in some cases, to greater pain in others.
And it is simply not the role of the President of the United States to inject himself into such Peyton Place personal dramas, especially not with an overbroad statement that “the person who claims THIS status will automatically always win the argument.”
On another level, this is related (indirectly and distantly, but related) to the thing I have found so offensive in our culture for years — the expectation that the president’s job is to share his emotions about everything that happens in the country. Great if you’re Bill Clinton, I guess, because he was great at radiating empathy; it played to his strength. But not so good for the dignity of the office.
The example that always comes to mind is the Columbine shootings. I watched some of the TV coverage of that the day it broke (I was working out in the gym in The State’s basement), and they kept cutting to someone standing in front of the White House, telling us that the president would have a statement on the shootings momentarily. You know, like we were all breathlessly waiting for the pres to come out and express the proper emotion for us.
This was an even that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the duties or responsibilities of the POTUS, and yet no one but me seemed to think it strange that he was expected to pop out of his door and perform because some head cases in Colorado had killed some classmates and themselves.
Those of you who watch TV news regularly can probably come up with hundreds of such cases. But I see it so seldom that stuff like this really jumps out at me. And it’s grossly inappropriate.
Oh, and as long as I’m going all Archie Bunker on y’all today…
Sorry, but evolution has hard-wired this notion into me that there are SIGNIFICANT differences between male and female, totally separate from the upper-body strength of a particular individual. As I often say when folks seek to put gender on the same footing as race, boys and girls are different; black people and white people are not.
The impact of having a woman in a combat infantry unit, for instance, is completely different from whether that woman can tote a rifle. She may be Annie Oakley and can outshoot the platoon, but she has a completely different impact on group dynamics than that which any man would.
I saw an interesting illustration of this in “The Pacific.” I forget which episode (I only have two to go!). But mortarman Eugene Sledge has just returned from prolonged hell on (I think) Peleliu. And when I say hell, I mean he has descended pretty much to the bottom level, gradually, in a process that has made him into something drastically different from what he was.
He was a nice kid — a Bible reader, polite to his elders, thoughtful. His Mama had done all she could to keep him out of the military. He had a heart murmur. He was delicate. But he eventually gets his wish and goes into the Marines and finds himself in combat and… it changes him.
Then he and his surviving buddies are pulled out and shipped to an island in the rear area. They’re staggering through the super-clean, neat encampment, still filthy from combat, in shock at being out of it… and they see a table behind which several nurses in crisp white uniforms — looking like a vision out of heaven — are handing out cups of juice to the men. His reaction? He stares, and demands suspiciously and indignantly, “What the hell are THEY doing here?” When one of the young women hands him a cup and he continues to stare at her, a young officer, grinning, tells him to move on; he’s looked enough. He looks at the officer with a “Who the hell are YOU talking to” expression, and the grin leaves the officer’s face as he sees the look in those eyes. Sledge just trudges away.
I’m not entirely sure how to verbalize my point here, except that there was something in it that illustrates my point about the impact of the presence of a woman in certain situations…
Another aspect of it had to do with the life-affirming relationship that another Marine formed with a young woman in Australia after Guadalcanal. Walter complained on another post that that episode should have begun, “Dear Penthouse…,” but I saw it as necessary as evidence that life was still possible after what these Marines had been through.
Brad,
You’re trying to let the rare exceptions provide the justification for the rule. Using your example, what if the father of the patient was an abuser and the partner knew that?
What rights should a parent have after the child is 18 (or 21)?
And Doug, you’re furthering my point. Every case is different. The President of the United States doesn’t need to be trying to articulate an overarching rule to govern those situations.
Not a proper part of the job, and not anything that he can dictate effectively and fairly from his position.
Brad, You’re right. Every case is different. That’s the point. The problem is a priori judgement. And that takes an ‘outside’ hand to ensure change. If you are seriously ill or dying, and capable of saying whom you want to have visitation, your wishes should be honored. The hospital should not be in the business of saying, “Sorry, we don’t allow left-handed redheads visitation.” Likewise, if you’ve chosen in advance the person you want to make decisions in the event you can’t (since I have no family nearby, I’ve designated a close friend), that decision should stand. I applaud that the Prez. has done something, since the hospitals have surely refused to change!
“If you say, “Same-sex (partners, friends, whatever) automatically win arguments about death-bed visitation over family members,” then you’ve set an absolute standard based on whether one is in, or claims to be in, such a relationship with the patient. ”
Brad–please stop positing straw men–I did not say that. People have ADVANCE DIRECTIVES in which they specify who will make decisions for them, and it isn’t too big a jump to say those people have dibs on visitation rights. The case that brought all this about was where a lesbian couple had advance directives that the hospital refused to honor.
You’d think the feds don’t need to get involved, except it seems like a pretty huge denial of civil rights (free association, maybe?) to deny someone the right the choose who will attend his deathbed, but I’m guessing some Catholic hospitals, which already disregard advance directives (I heard it on NPR Thursday or Friday) figure Father Knows Best.
AND
The Pacific is a fictionalized account made in Hollywood…and just because ONE woman was a great idea doesn’t mean it HAD to be a woman or it couldn’t have been a man. I have had very caring male nurses and some mighty bitchy female bosses.
a priori judgments made on false criteria!
Look, if I’m auditioning singers for a choir, and a woman comes in with a great bass voice or a man with a superb soprano, is it sensible for me to say, “No, all women must sing soprano or alto and all men tenor or bass” just because almost all women and men are divided up in that way? And these are secondary sex characteristics. Being a caring person or a great leader is not!
Now see, you’re being too restrictive.
Men can also be baritones. (In fact, most are, aren’t they?) Women can be contraltos.
… and while the stories in “The Pacific” are being dramatized, I’m not sure how much fiction there is. These are true stories, about actual people — based on their memoirs of the war.
Even in the truest stories, the storyteller seeks to inject “a semblance of meaning,” as James Jones put it in his fictionalized account of Guadalcanal. It’s a difficult urge to resist. But these are true stories.
Doug,
Kathryn,
Many Thanks for your postings.
Just because some women are a certain way, doesn’t mean ALL are. Now c’mon, you knew that.
MOST men are baritones and most women are mezzo sopranos. That doesn’t mean ALL are. It’s bell curve kinda thing…
Brad,
Just because you didn’t know there was a problem doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist. There have been numerous cases where same-sex partners have been denied visitation and medical decision-making rights despite proof of power of attorney or an out-of-state marriage or civil union.
http://www.nclrights.org/site/PageServer?pagename=issue_caseDocket_Greene_v_County_of_Sonoma_et_al
http://www.probatelawyerblog.com/2009/02/power-of-attorney-lawsuit-and-gay-rights.html
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/how-hospitals-treat-same-sex-couples/
To answer your question as to why this is a federal case: the problem is a federal one because many of these cases are the result of certain states (Florida is a notorious offender) disregarding legal status and authority established in other states. The federal validity of the solution comes through President Obama’s executive authority over the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs; the directive applies “only” to hospitals that accept patients under either program (which is almost all of them).
Wally, that is a lucid, well-researched, informative comment.
Thank you for sharing it.
One of my favorite shows of all time is I’ll Fly Away, which took place during the early 60s in the South. One of the huge points it illustrated was that the feds had to be brought in to enforce minority rights because the states were unwilling to do so. Here we go again.