Now here’s something gay couples actually lack
In the debate over same-sex marriage and civil unions, you hear a good deal about hospital visitation as a right to which gay couples are supposedly deprived. Although this claim is probably sympathy-producing, it’s also bogus. I’ve been an RN for 12 years; I know for a fact that you don’t have to be anything more than the friend of a friend of a friend to visit a hospitalized patient. Hospital visitation policies are now so lax as to be nonexistent.
Meanwhile, there’s something you almost never hear about in the debate over same-sex marriage, even though it’s something of which gay couples are in fact deprived. It’s called spousal privilege against compelled testimony. Heterosexual couples have it; gay couples don’t. Case in point:
NEW YORK — A gay man charged with helping his lover loot a wealthy school district has asked a judge to rule that state law protecting spouses from having to testify against each other also applies to same-sex partners.
Stephen Signorelli, fighting charges that he stole at least $219,000 from the Roslyn, New York, school district, is seeking to bar testimony by his longtime companion, Frank Tassone, the district’s former superintendent.
[…]
In a motion filed before a judge in Nassau County, Signorelli sought to bar such an appearance, saying he and Tassone deserved the same protection as a heterosexual couple.
On the view that the trust and intimacy of marriage would be undermined by requiring them to take the stand against one another, the law exempts heterosexual spouses from compelled testimony. Gay spouses enjoy no such exemption.
Now admittedly, a cry for spousal privilege in criminal proceedings isn’t as sympathy-evoking as a cry for hospital visitation. But the former is at least a cry to remedy an actual inequality.
It goes farther than gay partners. Monica Lewinsky made a plea a while back to extend the priviledge to parents and children, for instance. (And I have always wondered why Elizabeth Taylor and whoever she’s married to this week have more protection than Oprah and Steadman.)
Spousal privilege varies from state to state — and is not necessarily something I support (depends on how it’s implemented in the particular state).
But that reminds me of a question I’ve had for some time. When I was a kid, we were not allowed to go into hospitals. Now you see kids in hospitals all the time. When and why did that change?
I don’t know when exactly that started to change, but the why is pretty easy to answer. Provided that they behave, there’s no good reason to keep kids out. The prohibition against kids was based, at least in part, on the idea that hospitals are traumatizing to them. And in some cases, that’s undoubtedly true. Not every kid can handle seeing his grandpa hooked up to a ventilator. But parents can judge that better than hospital staff.
The other reason for keeping out kids — and some adults, too — was the convenience of the staff. But that’s no longer thought to be a good reason for depriving sick people of visitors. Patients benefit from the visits of their loved ones.
In my own case, except for medical necessity, I never bar any visitors as long as they act right. If they show their asses — if they bring their drama from the house to the hospital — I ask the Houston police officer on duty to escort them to the exit.