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A new regulation permits patients to choose visitors.
A change in hospital visitation rules has been a long time in coming and countless families have suffered from overly restrictive practices. Which is what makes this such good news.
A new regulation, which goes into effect two months from now, forces any hospital that participates in Medicare or Medicaid to allow patients to decide who can visit them. This means all unmarried partners, siblings, family-like friends, non-biological parents, grandparents, primary caregivers and someone who just makes you feel like getting healthy can show up at a hospital patients’ bedside — no signed documents or legal battles necessary.
That’s huge! Continue reading »
Ban on gay adoptions in Florida ruled unconstitutional
The rights of gay parents to adopt in Florida just took a big step forward. On Wednesday, a Miami appeals court ruled unanimously – 3-0 – that the state’s 33-year-old ban on adoptions by gay men and women is unconstitutional. Though the case may yet advance to the Florida Supreme Court for a final resolution, the ruling has prompted Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to announce that he would stop enforcing the ban immediately.
The Miami Herald quotes from the appeals court’s 35-page opinion:
“Given a total ban on adoption by homosexual persons, one might expect that this reflected a legislative judgment that homosexual persons are, as a group, unfit to be parents … No one in this case has made, or even hinted at, any such argument.
A federal judge in Massachusetts has found the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, saying that married same-sex couples deserve the same rights and privileges as heterosexual married people.
Finding with the plaintiffs in two separate cases, the judge said that the federal government can’t deny same-sex couples whose marriages are recognized by their home state the benefits it extends to other married couples in that state.
About time. Thank you, Judge Tauro.
A pediatrician in Florida is giving preggo patients experimental hormone treatments in the hopes of preventing their future daughters from becoming lesbians.This isn’t quite what I had in mind when I suggested that more drugs should be tested on pregnant women.
The hormone, dexamethasone (also called “dex”), has not been shown to be safe for pregnant women or their unborn children. The FDA hasn’t approved it for use in pregnant women, but a few researchers think it shows promise in preventing “ambiguous genitalia” in babies: genitals that are neither clearly male nor female.
Maria New and her colleagues at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine are taking it a step further, and experimenting to see if the drug can prevent lesbianism in girl babies. They also hope to “help” girls grow up to be wives and mothers. Their dream is to find a cure not only for queerness, but also for an “abnormal” disinterest in babies, marriage and “women’s work”.
The Chicago Tribune reported last week that a woman, identified as Wendy, “who raised two adopted children for years in a same-sex relationship is not considered their parent under Wisconsin law,” according to the District 4 Court of Appeals. The court ruled Thursday that Wendy’s former partner Liz is the only legal parent of the children because their adoptions were processed under Liz’s name. ”Same-sex couples do not have adoption rights in Wisconsin, meaning that only one of them can be considered the legal parent,” according to the Tribune.
As you can imagine, this decision is crushing for Wendy, who was a stay-at-home mom to the children for seven years. In response to the judge’s ruling, Wendy said, “I shouldn’t have to fight to parent my kids who I’ve been parenting 24-7. For me to read in the court documents that I’m not a parent is disturbing and troubling.” She is considering taking her case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
This ruling is in line with a recent decision by a judge in the UK, who determined the non-biological lesbian mother of a ten-year-old boy is not his legal parent. It does not, however, follow the precedent just set by the U.S. government allowing the partners of gay biological and adoptive parents who have an in loco parentis relationship with their partner’s child to care for said child under the Family and Medical Leave Act. The FMLA ruling does not indicate that non-biological gay parents are the legal parents of a child they care for, but that they have a legal right to care for their child. If gay parents have a legal right to care for a child that is ostensibly their child via the aforementioned in loco parentis relationship, then why, provided that they are responsible and loving parents, is it so difficult for non-biological/adoptive gay parents to be granted the same parental rights after a split? It just doesn’t make sense. Continue reading »
The Labor Department issued a ruling today allowing employees in a same-sex relationship to care for the child of his or her partner under the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act. The new ruling is based on language used in the 1993 law, and cites that “a biological or legal relationship is not necessary” for someone to be in loco parentis with a child.
Good news! Yet the FMLA still does not allow same-sex couples to care for one another, because the U.S. government does not recognize same-sex partnerships. Individual employers are free to provide benefits to homosexual couples, but they are not required to under federal law.
How are the children of same-sex partners supposed to do well if their parents aren’t treated well? How can any parent be expected to care for a child if they themselves are not cared for? There’s some important logic missing in this ruling. Continue reading »
A High Court judge in the U.K. ruled on Friday that the non-biological lesbian mother of a 10-year-old boy is not required to pay child maintenance to her former girlfriend. The couple had not entered into a civil union and therefore Justice Moylan said the non-biological mother could not be deemed a legal parent, despite being a “social and psychological” one.
Moylan said, “I have come to the clear conclusion that those against whom orders can be made… are confined to those who are a parent in the legal meaning of the word,” Lemondrop U.K. reports. The judge does not consider the non-biological mother a legal parent despite the fact that she won a court order for shared residence with her son. Moylan said the shared custody might appear “persuasive” in the argument for her to be defined as a legal parent, but “the mere obtaining of parental responsibility is clearly not intended to make someone a legal parent when they would not otherwise be such.” Meaning, for example, that a grandmother who is granted the temporary custody of her grandchild does not suddenly become the child’s legal parent.
So the non-biological mother in this case, known only as B, has a right to see her son, but not a responsibility to pay child support. Hmm… that’s sticky. How can we normalize same-sex parenting if we don’t hold gay parents to the same legal standards as hetero parents? Continue reading »
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