"What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?"

Ed Brayton has a post which highlights the need for the government to recognize gay marriage.

The couple, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, were getting ready to board a cruise in Miami with their adopted children when Lisa collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

Janice then sat in the waiting room with their children, being refused any access to her partner and information on her condition for hours on end even after the hospital had the documents showing that she was designated as Lisa's healthcare surrogate to make medical decisions in such a situation. And a federal judge just dismissed her lawsuit against the hospital.

The court ruled, essentially, that the hospital had no legal duty to do anything more than they did, even if the hospital's own clearly stated rules say otherwise.

I feel terribly for Janice. It pains me to think of my father's death. He spent the last few moments of his life on the ground in a parking lot 1000+ miles away from his family. The last time we spoke on the phone did not go very well and two days later he was dead. I never got a chance to say goodbye or to say what I wanted to say to him. And here we have Janice who is just down the hall from her partner in life as she lies dying yet she is denied the chance to say her goodbyes. That must have been incredibly frustrating and maddening. The hospital administrator deserves a punch in the nose.

Janice wrote:

I even showed the Admitting clerk the children's birth certificates with both Lisa and my name on them... and said if you won't let me back, let her children be with her. I was told they were "too young". I thought how old do you need to be to say goodbye to your mother?

This is outrageous. I don't understand this attitude. Back in the day, the death of a family member was dealt with at home. There were no undertakers so it was the family that washed the body and got it ready for the wake. And it was the family that buried the body. Death wasn't outsourced and dealt with behind the closed doors of strangers. Yet somehow children managed to grow up and be normal, productive members of society.

Getting back to gay marriage, I found this video this morning. It shows a World War II veteran named Philip Spooner speaking out in favor of it before a legislative committee in Maine which is considering the issue on an upcoming ballot.



The kicker:

I’m here today because of a conversation I had last year when I was voting. A woman at my polling place asked me, “Do you believe in equality for gay and lesbian people?”

I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that; it made no sense to me.

Finally I asked her, “What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?”