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Obama Expands Hospital Visitation Rights

Well Finally Obama has used some of the power of the office of president to make a concrete mover for LGBT equality (notably one that he could and really should have done with DADT) threw presidential order.  President Obama ordered that all hospitals that take medicare and medicaid must allow same-sex partners of patients to visit, and that patients have the power to chose a same-sex partner to make medical decisions for them should they become unable to.  This is significant in the fact that because it is attached to medicare medicaid it affects nearly every hospital in the country as nearly every one take them.  This order also has an effect for straight patients as it also allows them to declare a non direct relative or even close friend to make medical decisions for them if need be instead of next of kin the would normally be prescribed by law.  


This presidential order is something however that in my opinion is way over due, as it is obvious that Obama knew he had the power to do this from day one and seeing that there was little to no action on the national level in congers to correct this he should have taken this action day one.  It will according to the different coverage take months for the laws to be drafted and this presidential order to go into effect.  This is a great first step, but now it's time for Obama to take some strong action on DADT if that means another presidential order calling for a halt of prosecution. Since congers is the only one that can change the Law concerning DADT, but their is not point in not getting read of a law that the commander and chief has order the military to ignore.   That is is where his power will be strongest but he also needs to step up his effort to get congress to pass ENDA and get that on his desk to be signed, because one of the most damaging things to the gay rights movement are those that remain in the closet because they fear losing their jobs and those every thing else they have worked for.  If we can get ENDA and DADT, that will get us as a community on a strong footing to finally secure our selves the final frontier of equality which is marriage. 

As always thank you for reading, and comments always welcome :-)
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Comments

  1. Biki HonkoApril 17, 2010 at 2:52 AM

    I want ENDA to pass as well, however until there is a copy of the bill to read, I'm with holding my judgement on it. There is rumor out there that the trans issues have been stripped from the bill, basically removing any protection for trans people. Because while gay and lesbian are getting to be more accepted, the transcommunity still carries a major burden of bigotry and hatred, even among the gay community unfortunately.

    But, it is a mockery for in our everyone is equal under the eyes of the law for only some of us to have access to civil rights.

    Great post as usual!

    ReplyDelete
  2. aNorthWestViewApril 17, 2010 at 1:39 PM

    I too would like text or at least a nice in depth summary of how the bill stands now. I think the current one dose include trans in it, but being that there have been so many that have floated around my memory could always be off.

    ReplyDelete

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