WYFP (which stands for "What's Your Fucking Problem?") is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
President Obama has taken the small but significant step of making hospitals treat GLBT couples the same as straight couples. As a gay person I feel like this is a step that would have been enormous fifteen years or so ago but now it's pretty nice. I still say our President deserves praise for it and he's rightly getting a lot of that here.
This action is significant in that it will directly affect more people than the Hate Crimes Bill did, though every single law that improves our status and removes institutional stigmas against us is important. Even those we might never deal with individually.
Hilariously enough, the Republicans and antigay organizations have been silent on this action. They are seemingly terrified of opposing equal hospital rights for GLBT people. Some have hinted that they're unhappy with this development though.
Rather than argue that same-sex partners should not be granted equal medical rights, they asserted that Mr. Obama was pandering to his political base and undermining the traditional definition of marriage.
I'm not completely aware of how hospital visitation rights affects the traditional definition of marriage but at least they are finding some way to oppose equality. It just wouldn't be the same without the bigots. I guess I always assumed that what mattered to the religious right was the religious definition of marriage - and that the state should uphold the religious definition. I didn't know that hospitals should be forced to use the same term for partner as religious institutions. Silly me.
I do have to say I'm hoping they decide to use this:
But they did not say Mr. Obama’s argument — that gay men and lesbians deserve the same rights as others to have partners visit them in hospitals or make medical decisions that were previously agreed — was wrong on the merits.
I dare you. Please, bring it on. I know that's what you're thinking. In an era where the Tea Party movement is slowly gaining control of the GOP and they are largely silent on contentious social issues, and people like Meghan McCain and Margaret Hoover are trying to liberalize the GOP's stance on GLBT rights, I certainly hope some people in the party will open up another front in their civil war.
Not to mention how horrible they'll look if they say outright that they oppose hospital visitation rights for a percentage of Americans based on orientation. Even the Catholic Health Association supports it.
"Everybody in this country has a right to say, If I can’t speak for myself, this is the person I want to speak for me," said Sister Carol Keehan, the group’s president. "I think it’s a huge leap to say this is paving the way for gay marriage."
When you're to the right of the Catholic Church on gay issues it's time to back off.
Not that the GOP is in the best position here. That's why they're not saying much about this development. What could they say?
"Well, who would oppose these sorts of rights for our GLBT citizens?"
We could just say, "You do."
Opposition to marriage for GLBT people, and opposition to the Employment Non Discrimination Act IS opposition to this sort of thing. There is no mushy middle-of-the-road view on this. The laws that affect marriage, all 1,130 of the federal laws involve things like this. It is all about visitation rights, wills and taxes. Things that help or hurt all Americans.
The monetary cost just of being alive and gay is huge:
Here is what we came up with. In our worst case, the couple’s lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.
Some of the costs that were analyzed include:
We looked at benefits that routinely go to married heterosexual couples but not to gay couples, like certain Social Security payments. We plotted out the cost of health insurance for couples whose employers don’t offer it to domestic partners. Even tax preparation can cost more, since gay couples have to file two sets of returns.
And make no mistake, as the article notes, legalizing gay marriage would eliminate these extra costs to GLBT families. And looking at this list, these are every day American things. People who oppose gay marriage DO in fact oppose "equal rights" for "this sort of thing" as it were.
Adding to this is the fact that people who oppose ENDA oppose all of these as well - because you need a job to pay these extra costs. Many people need a job to be able to go to the hospital in the first place. Many people can't get their partner's insurance through their jobs.
The GOP's opposition to ENDA means that they don't just oppose very vague definitions of the word marriage. They don't just want to uphold tradition. That's their framing. That's what they'd like us to believe. No, their opposition to these things means that they oppose the very basic humanity that should be afforded to everyone. They don't want to see that extended to gay couples. ANYbody who says that they aren't comfortable with gay marriage but they are okay with things like this are either lying or completely misinformed, thanks to GOP lies.
You simply can't support one without the other. They can't be separated. In fact the only feasible way one could argue that they are separate is if they are also pushing for the federal government to completely get out of the marriage business, eliminate those 1,130 rights for everyone and eliminate tax breaks or penalties for married couples and children. Then perhaps you could say that you really do want gays to have equal rights without federally recognized marriage.
That won't ever happen though because these conservative groups realize that state recognition of something like marriage is significant for building a society. When the state condones or condemns something, it DOES matter. That's why this strategy is so vile and underhanded. They know this and yet they still push to keep gay people from getting valid marriages. They don't want us to be seen as people. They don't want us to be part of society.
So, please, GOP. Fight this. Bring. It. On.
Note: I have decided to go silent here for awhile because of the increase of homophobia and tolerance of homophobia here. I signed up to write this diary awhile ago and didn't want to let people down. After this, it's back to shutting up.