I assume you mean well by your suggestions – “just tell them you’re a sibling” and “LGBT people should just change their names when they get married” – but, respectfully, please do not blame LGBT people for discrimination against us.

Tell me, why should we have to lie about our primary relationships or change our own names(!) (in my opinion, an anachronistic patriarchal ownership practice) in order to expect basic human decency?

And as to the first suggestion – say you show up at the hospital with your same-sex spouse. They ask why you are there with the sick person and you tell them. They whisk her inside to the trauma unit to take care of her. An hour later it becomes clear that you are going to be treated like dog shit. And now you’re supposed to say “wait, wait, no I’m actually her SISTER, not her wife”? And that’s going to help? Denying the identity of the love of your life in her last moments? And don’t you think the bigots will just laugh in your face?

So maybe we should just assume that EVERYONE is going to treat us like sub-humans and retreat back into the closet completely?

No thanks.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Tim, that’s an insult to all of the fine pornographers out there! :-P

There’s another piece to this puzzle though Kith. She had power of attorney. What kind of medical care can a hospital reasonably claim to be providing when they assert an absolute right to completely ignore your prepared legal and medical directives documents? Are those documents completely worthless then, or only worthless as they apply to same sex couples?

Furthermore, I’m told she wasn’t even allowed to get a death certificate after the fact. Does the Trauma Ward provide those?

They’re hiding behind the needs of the truma ward. Transparently so. And I’m sorry to say a jury here in Maryland probably gave hospitals all over the nation the go-ahead to use that as an excuse to discriminate. See the case of Robert Lee Daniel and Bill Robert Flanigan at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in October 2000. Another horror story, and that one comes complete with the patient being strapped to the bed and a tube being put down his throat that Daniel had been terrified of and insisted to Flanigan (who once again had power of attorney) he didn’t want done to him. Shock Trauma went ahead and did it anyway. Patient care.

Hospitals need the arbitrary right to deny access to the trauma ward. If they had to prove just cause to keep someone out they would never be able to deny access to say a hysterical mother who was preventing doctors from concentrating. In such needing to prove “cause” would slow down the process and endanger the patients life.

The issue here is of course defining “trauma ward” since it seems clear the partner was denied access far after the time in which the doctors where “Caring” for the patient and the issue of animus. It is clear the denial of access in this case was intended to cause harm and not to promote the care of the patient.