Another reason we need marriage equality

[redbird]

As roadnotes put it, spreading this story because it's terrifying:

Sonoma County officials deliberately ignored a twenty-year relationship between two men, despite their having mutual powers of attorney and medical directives naming each other. They were forced into separate nursing homes, their property seized and sold, and their lease nullified.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

The county workers told the judge the two men were just "roommates."

The article notes that this happened in relatively liberal Sonoma County. But without that legal status, "safety" is the luck of the draw: is the county or city worker who happens to get your case a decent, accepting person, or are they homophobic?

Right here, right now, I'm safe from this kind of oppression: I'm legally married to someone of the socially acceptable gender. And I'm still feeling both angry and a little bit scared.

Comments

[yarram.livejournal.com]

..what concerns me is that this also sets a precedent for legally-enabled elder-abuse of non-married heterosexual couples, too.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Which in the past has been an effective way to fight the battle. I mean, I'd rather go in under a banner of "everyone deserves recognition of basic human rights", because that's the moral high ground. But if it changes the law enough to get recognition of visiting rights sooner, then it can be useful to talk e.g. about elderly het couples who can't afford to marry because of what it does to their Social Security benefits. (And of course, elderly het couples deserve next-of-kin benefits too, anyway.)

I'm safe from this particular oppression, being het and married. But people I care about *aren't*. And there's the slippery slope aspect too: my own marriage was illegal right here where I am in living memory.