Gay and lesbian hospital patients are now allowed to have non-family visitors, and are also allowed to grant their partners medical power of attorney. President Obama ordered the Department of Health and Human Service to prohibit the discrimination preventing those visits. The ruling will affect any hospital that receives Medicare and Medicaid funding, according to the Washington Post.
I have a lot of issues with this order, none of which have anything to do with gays and lesbians having the right to visits from loved ones. This falls under my post Monday in which I explained that, “I try to mind my own damn business and therefore the sexual orientation of consenting adults is not my concern. I just don’t care.”
However, I care a lot about presidential orders and it bothers me immensely that a president can involve himself in the personal affairs of hospital patients and the individual policy of hospitals, even though the outcome of his order is something that I support. Yes, I know this only affects hospitals receiving government payments but that is still too much government. I am also concerned about the order declaring that gays and lesbians can have non-family visitors. What about us straight folks? Do we get the same privilege? Are there decimation issues in this?
Folks, this is an example of the synergy of overbearing government and morality politics. That we need a presidential order to force people to mind their own damn business is a significant failure of the need to mind our own damn business. Those of you that have moral issues with gay and lesbian rights; do you really want to keep hospital patients from visits with loved ones? Is that really one of your desired outcomes?!? Further, did you realize your opposition to gay rights could lead the federal government even further into the sphere of doctors, hospitals, and their patients?
Gay and lesbian hospital visitation rights, like so many things surrounding the issues of gay and lesbians, are the business of the individual. Here in the United States we call this, individual rights. Moral codes should be taught to children by their parents, not taught by governments to its subjects. Here is a case in which We the People should have minded our own damn business in order to make sure our government minded its own damn business. Now its too late.
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Interesting discussion piece on this headline.
http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2010/04/obama-only-pretends-to-rewrite-every-states-domestic-laws-to-benefit-gays-lesbians.html
Actually it says that all patients have the right to designate who is allowed to visit, not just Gay and Lesbian patients. The last time this type of executive order was used, Johnson used it to desegregate hospitals. Sometimes it takes governmnet intervention to assure human rights. I see your point that if everybody minded TODB this wouldn’t be necessary.