On May 30, many people met in the middle of California; Fresno more specifically to discuss the future of same-sex marriages and equal rights here in California after Prop 8 was upheld by the Supreme Court. It was to be a time of solidarity, celebration, and also protest. Unfortunately, at the same time here at the meeting- a young lesbian woman fell into a seizure..Here is the article written by the Associated Press below, with a current update. (Published 6/15/09)
FRESNO, Calif. — Civil rights groups are urging a hospital in central California to change its policies after employees briefly barred a lesbian from visiting her partner, who went into seizure at a gay marriage march.
Kristin Orbin collapsed May 30 after walking 14 miles in the protest march. She was taken to Fresno’s Community Regional Medical Center, where she says an ambulance driver kept her partner from seeing her in the emergency room.
Teresa Rowe says hospital employees also ignored her requests to talk to a doctor about Orbin’s care.
Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Lesbian Rights on Monday urged the hospital to change its policies.
The nonprofit system that runs the hospital says Orbin received good care and the hospital followed proper procedures.
got the article here
This is why we need to have equal rights for partners. Both heterosexual and homosexual. To deny someone the right to see their partner while in the hospital is despicable. I read the statement from the Fresno hospital and think “who the FUCK cares what kind of care she got?” This isn’t about the care she received, this is about that you did not let her partner COME INTO THE ROOM WITH HER. She could not see her! This angers me to no end. To deny someone the company and comfort that they so wish, is not PROPER procedure.
When I entered the ER, I was able to bring my boyfriend in at the time with me. I was 19 at the time, he 24. We weren’t living together. We hadn’t been dating that long. But he was able to come into the hospital room with me, and when I read this story- it makes me so upset to think I had taken advantage of “heterosexual privilege,” and was fully unaware of it.
I’m not heterosexual though. I’m a proud queer woman. Or bisexual, for those who really want to get technical. And I have been privileged and comforted by the system and have not faced this sort of discrimination before. IT MAKES ME SICK TO THINK THAT THIS HAPPENS. I know that it does, and it’s not necessarily denial that I’m stricken with. It’s the idea that even with things like “domestic partnerships” *and California’s ideologies for the most part- are more progressive.
But it’s that so many people came to Fresno to meet up for equality- and ironically enough, this Fresno hospital is now faced with DISCRIMINATION charges.
*(IF you throw the words “domestic partnerships” in my face, that’s bullshit. They are NOT equal. )
