Some straight people really are grasping that LGBT people really are entitled to basic human rights like hospital visitations -- but lots of them aren't

Research Medical Center's behavior would have been revolting and unacceptable even if there weren't any applicable law, but in fact there is.

by Ken

I suppose you could look at it the other way: that it represents progress of a sort when racists and bigots get crazy when you call them racists and bigots. Once upon a time they wouldn't have given a damn.

Same deal now with anti-LGBT bigots. Where once they would have been proud to be called that, now more and more of them bristle at the notion that they're hate-mongers. They're just deeply immersed in their faith, they insist. Bulltwaddle. Bigots and hate-mongers are bigots and hate-mongers.

Just recently I took strong exception to the insanely ridiculous argument made by far-right AZ Rep. Matt Salmon to his gay son Matt that he can't support "LGBT rights" because they aren't a legal issue. That's standing reality on its head. When people can be summarily fired, can be denied housing, can be denied shared-property and property-inheritance rights, and can be refused participation in and access to sick partners, just to hit the higher points on the list of basic human rights that LGBT people are routinely denied, what could you possibly call it except a legal issue? If you've got a working brain, that is. And if you aren't just a lying sack of filth.

And I followed up with the screamingly outrageous, unconscionable case of Florida journalist Billy Manes, who while coping with the sudden, unexpected death of his life partner, Alan Jordan found the partner's relatives not only denying his existence but stealing not just the property that Billy and Alan had owned jointly but even walking off with property that was in Billy's name.

Billy was way more understanding of their grief than he had reason to be. After all, these are people who pretended to love a man whose basic identity they denied and despised. They should all be rotting in prison until they can explain why their behavior was demonic.

IT OCCURS TO ME NOW THAT THERE ARE
TWO KINDS OF RESPONSES TO THESE CASES

There are, on the one hand, straight people to whom it's simply never occurred that rights they consider so basic that they don't even think of them as rights are denied to LGBT people for no reason other than that they're lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. And then there are the monsters like Alan Jordan's family and the senior Matt Salmon, who are merely insistent on their God-given right, even obligation, to bully and hate. They're the lying liars who bray that LGBT people are demanding some kind of "special rights."

I don't suppose that second category will "get" this instance of outrageous hospital behavior either. But I'm hoping that there are a lot of straight people who just didn't realize. Our BuzzFeed colleague Chris Geidner reports.

Federal Officials Aim For "Speedy" Response Following Missouri Hospital Arrest

After the arrest of gay patient's partner in Missouri's Research Medical Center, federal officials are "working to gather the facts and determine what steps to take in a speedy manner."

posted on April 11, 2013 at 6:13pm EDT

Chris Geidner | BuzzFeed Staff

WASHINGTON -- Federal officials are "aware" of the Missouri hospital that had a man arrested for refusing to leave the bedside of his partner, and "are working to gather the facts and determine what steps to take in a speedy manner," a Medicare/Medicaid spokesman said Thursday afternoon.

News spread Thursday about the arrest of Roger Gorley, who had been trying to visit at Research Medical Center in Kansas City with the man he described in a Facebook note as his husband, Allen Mansell. The two were joined in a civil union.

When one of Mansell's family members asked him to leave, he refused and was later arrested. According to a note posted on Research Medical Center's Facebook page Thursday afternoon, "This was an issue of disruptive and belligerent behavior by the visitor that affected patient care." The hospital also states in the post that the decision was unrelated to sexual orientation.

At President Obama's direction during his first term, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued regulations mandating that hospitals that receive Medicaid or Medicare funds allow patients the right to have visitors of their choosing, regardless of sexual orientation.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which enforces the regulations through coordination with the states, is looking into the situation. CMS spokesman Brian Cook told BuzzFeed Thursday afternoon, "CMS is aware of this specific issue and we are working to gather the facts and determine what steps to take in a speedy manner."

"All Americans are guaranteed the right to receive hospital visitors that they designate, and there are specific protections in our rules for same-sex couples across the country," Cook added. "We take alleged violations of federal rules around hospital visitation very seriously."

Guidance issued by CMS on the regulations includes the following: "When a patient who is not incapacitated has designated, either orally to hospital staff or in writing, another individual to be his/her representative, the hospital must involve the designated representative in the development and implementation of the patient's plan of care."

Now the hospital is claiming, of course, that it wasn't the offending visitor's gayness that was at issue. It was his uncooperative behavior. I'm prepared to believe that he got a tad demonstrative when he was forcibly ejected from his sick partner's presence. I guess if by chance the hospital gestapo had attempted such a forcible ejection with a female partner, she would have been expected to go quietly like a good "little woman."

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