Schiavo case amplifies case for Gay Marriage.

Discussing the Schiavo case with an acquaintance yesterday, he mad a great point. He had lost his partner of 12 years to leukemia a couple of years ago and in the last few weeks of life, his partners parents, who despised his lifestyle and my friend, refused him access to the hopital room (this patient was not concious in the last weeks). He could not be with his lover because his lover's parents were his guardian and they had the final say over who had access to the patient.

Terri Schiavo's parents are making the same argument. They feel that the husband is not an honest guardian and they think that they should have final say over their daughter's will.

Mrs. Shiavos parents are feeling the pain that many gay and lesbian couples fear- that their relationship with a loved one is not recognized by the courts and they can be shut out in times of crisis.

If there is a silver lining to this whole tragic episode- maybe our friends on the right will see this injustice and help us to remedy it.

I wonder if anyone on the right is not brain dead themselves enough to notices.. thanks for a great post..

Not in my opinion anyway.

Look what happened here? A legal marriage is being IGNORED, with overt attempts made to strip Michael Schiavo of his legal rights as husband.

No, what it does is prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that EVERYBODY needs Living Wills and Durable Power of Attorney for medical decision-making paperwork NOW.

If you don't have them -- whether gay, straight, in a relationship or marriage or alone -- you NEED these things immediately.

Get thy butt on over to Nolo Press or one of the other online resources.

Michael Schiavo can be also compared to your friend-

The Schindlers and their supporters want to decide who is a "legitimate" spouse or guardian for Terri(who married Michael of her own volition).

The Schindlers have petitioned the courts, and enlisted the Congress and the White House, to help them take away legitimate family rights from Terri's spouse/partner/guardian.

They are attempting to use their own religion to trump all, under the guise of "righteousness."



The Pagan Preacher
I updated my living will today.

Chances are the right will look at this case and say: if we allow gay marriage, then even a "queer" will have greater rights than parents...can't let that happen.

But you're right in the sense that getting gay couples the same rights as straight couples is critical to ensure that in situations like this the partner isn't left without any rights..

onenote

if anything it would give them greatest pleasure to inflict as much pain on a long time couple as possible, Schiavo be damned.

Remember, this party doesn't play by precedent - starting with the SCOTUS decision to quash the Florida recount in 2000, and now with this congressional act that's not supposed to be used as precedent.

In their mind, gay people are children who don't have the right to make grown up decisions about their lives, their bodies, their finances, or their families. In fact gay people aren't really people, so they don't really need "rights". Again, we have no "friends" on the right, and I'm not sacrificing the tiniest bit of hope that anyone on the right has my interests in mind.

The critical thing about the right is that they don't believe that two people of the same sex can really "love" each other; they want to reserve even that exclusively for heterosexuals. Our "love" is just a mental aberration you know, (ironically the right is a complete authority, if not encyclopedia, of mental aberrations).

There is nothing anyone on the right is going to do for us that we can't do for ourselves. Your living will can stipulate whether or not your parents have access to you in the hospital. Stipulate it. While my parents love and cherish my SO (he's the "good" son), I nevertheless stipulated that no party, including the hospital, could deny him access to me in the hospital for any reason whatsoever.

I wanted to put a rider on there that if I survived whatever misfortune would put me there to begin with and I discovered that anyone had even attempted to keep him from my side there would be a lot more people IN ICU in very short order, but I thought better of it.

which seems to be very popular today, according to several web reports.

I can promise that there are very few Living Wills that are being written today that instruct the executors to keep the author alive in a vegetative state to satisfy some perverse political ideology.

:dem:

Wouldn't even need an attorney on this one,just write that down in front of a Notary and both you and the Notary sign and date.