Why I keep harping on the treatment of gays by Democrats.

Pab Sungenis

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Thu Nov-04-10 04:57 PM
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Why I keep harping on the treatment of gays by Democrats.

http://cnx.com/?p=1341

It�s official: the gay vote was way down this year. And the percentage of gay voters voting Republican also jumped from 19% to 31%. In a number of close districts, that�s more than enough to shift a seat from one party to the other.

If you want to know why we�ve been so critical of President Obama and the Democrats for the cavalier way that they�ve treated LGBT Americans and our rights over the past two years, it can best be summed up in a letter I sent to one of my �Democratic� politicians explaining why I would not donate to, campaign for, or vote for him ever again after a very homophobic vote and campaign robocall.

I won�t quote the whole letter, and I won�t publicly announce which politician I sent it to, since it was a very personal letter from me. I had been an active supporter and campaign worker for this politician and I wanted to put our issues into personal terms for him.

In August of 2007, on my 38th birthday to be exact, I was hospitalized for acute diverticulitis which eventually led to a ruptured bowel requiring over a month�s hospitalization, three surgeries, a total of one year recuperating, and over a quarter million dollars in hospital bills. The experience, including my inability to work that whole time, all but bankrupted us and forced us into a foreclosure that will most likely lead to our house being sold at sheriff�s sale. Despite all that, the thing that still gets me angry is not the broken insurance system in this State and nationwide or the precarious financial situation the mortgage crisis leaves us in, but how Bryan was treated during that time.

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For the early part of my stay in the hospital, Bryan was treated by the medical staff as just another stranger off the street. We had prepared Medical Powers of Attorney years before, hoping to never need to use them, and Bryan brought copies to the hospital shortly after I was admitted. For most of the first several days I was knocked out with painkillers almost around the clock. I wasn�t able to understand any briefings that my doctors would give me on my condition because I was either knocked unconscious or in such intense pain that I couldn�t hear straight. Bryan would ask questions on my behalf but the hospital staff would refuse to answer. He tried to stay apprised of my treatment and intercede on my behalf regarding some aspects of that treatment, but the staff refused to listen to him. Even the Medical Power of Attorney was refused. Only after we dragged my lawyer, a Notary, and one of the nursing staff to my room, took me off of my painkillers long enough to be legally lucid, and I signed another copy of the exact same document in front of them was he ever treated as any kind of relative, let alone a spouse of more than a decade.

Sadly, those days were the good ones. Some days Bryan couldn�t even attempt to intercede on my behalf or comfort me at my side because a security guard at the hospital would refuse him entrance since he �wasn�t legally related to me.� Only my spouse could visit me at the hour he would arrive, the only time of day he could come see me after working a double shift at his job. Even after we sorted out the Power of Attorney to the medical staff�s satisfaction, he could still be blocked at the door just because �you aren�t really married.� Bryan couldn�t even get medical leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to tend to my affairs and make sure he was there for me because �you aren�t really married.�

The stock answer I imagine you would give me is that the New Jersey Civil Unions law fixed all that, and that it would never happen again. Sadly, that is not the case. We are in a Civil Union, and it has done nothing to solve the problem. At one point Bryan related the story to me about him slamming a copy of our certificate of Union onto the desk of a woman in the billing department who was refusing to speak with him. Her response was the exact same one that the security guard kept giving him: �you aren�t really married.�

Please put yourself in his place for a moment. Imagine that your wife is in the hospital. The staff won�t tell you what�s wrong with her, what kind of treatment she�s being given, won�t let you make decisions when she�s unable to, and quite often not even let you into her room. They�re doing this because you were married in a Church or by a politician instead of registering a Civil Union under Chapter 103. Without that Civil Union, you are not �really� husband and wife.

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I keep hearing from gay marriage opponents that their only objection is to the word �marriage� being used to define our relationship. Your arguments seem to be along these lines. The problem with that argument is that the word �marriage� is the problem. We went through all of that because our legal relationship is defined as a �Civil Union� and not a �marriage.�

That�s it in a nutshell. No one who hasn�t been in our position can really understand how tiny little things affect real lives, and how your �fringe issue� is someone�s life and death.

So think twice before you belittle our worries, our concerns, and our fight for our rights. And don�t be surprised if we fight back.