Smart Energy

Doug Stanhope: Voice of America – ABORTION IS GREEN.

Well, duh.

via YouTube – Doug Stanhope: Voice of America – ABORTION IS GREEN.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

via NCLR: issues & cases > case docket > greene v. county of sonoma et al. See also Dan Savage’s column in today’s Stranger and President Obama’s request last week that the “Department of Health and Human Services…  establish a rule that would prevent hospitals from denying visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners.”

Apparently, this all took place in Sonoma County. Read the rest of this entry »

At last! As I discussed in a previous post, the GLBT drive for “equal” rights, the right to get married, shows an extreme lack of imagination. Why gays, lesbians, and others would want to attain “equal” protection under a racist, sexist, colonialist, and permanently patriarchal system is beyond me. Now, Richard Kim and other have launched Beyond Marriage, a movement that acknowledges that “the struggle for marriage rights should be part of a larger effort to strengthen the stability and security of diverse households and families.” Beyond Marriage advocates for the complete “separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households and families” and “legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households and families – regardless of kinship or conjugal status.” Separation of church and state, and the divestment of sex from the concept of legal union: Amen, brothers, sisters and ‘tweeners. What this would mean, as I have long argued, is “access for all, regardless of marital or citizenship status, to vital government support programs including but not limited to health care, housing, Social Security and pension plans, disaster recovery assistance, unemployment insurance and welfare assistance.” Kim, writing in The Notion, offers an amusing response to his often “overheated” critics.

Richard Kim blogs in The Notion that the gay mainstream press has hit a new low: “If you want to see the pathologies plaguing the gay marriage movement in action, you need look no farther than this article penned by Jasmyne Cannick. Titled ‘Gays First, Then Illegals,’ Cannick’s editorial spews the kind of xenophobic rhetoric now rarely heard outside of right-wing radio and white nativist circles — unless, of course, it’s coming from the mainstream gay press.” Read the rest of this entry »