Well, mabye.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said yesterday that he might introduce a bill next year that would seek to accomplish some of the same aims as legislation he vetoed Friday that would have granted certain rights to unmarried partners, including gay couples.
“We may very well put in our own bill next year,” Ehrlich (R) said during a radio interview on Baltimore’s WBAL.
The legislation, approved by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, would have granted nearly a dozen rights to couples that register with the state, including authority over certain medical and funeral-related decisions for one another.
He suggested that his approach would build upon existing legal tools such as advance medical directives, which allow residents to designate someone to make medical decisions for them.
Gay rights activists who pushed for the bill argued that it included several rights not available through existing law.
I’m not holding my breath. After all, the governor had a bill that would have given gay couples the rights to hospital visitation, to make medical decisions, etc., and he vetoed it.
It doesn’t sound like what he may propose next year is an improvement on the bill he had in front of him this year. Advance directives and medical powers of attorney are good things to have but, as I’ve already covered, they are not always honored. Again, the case of partners Bill Flanigan and Robert Daniel underscores that these measures do not always protect our familes.
Told by hospital staff in Baltimore that he could not visit his dying life partner because he was not the partner’s family, Bill Flanigan, a resident of San Francisco, today sued the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore City Circuit Court. Flanigan’s partner of five years, Robert Daniel, had been admitted to the medical system’s Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore on October 16, 2000, from complications arising from AIDS. Flanigan and Daniel were on their way to visit Flanigan’s sister in the Washington, D.C. area, where a nearby hospital transferred Daniel to the Shock Trauma Center – part of the University of Maryland Medical System – because of Daniel’s critical condition.
As he was kept in the waiting area of the Shock Trauma Center, Flanigan asked staff members to allow him to see Daniel and to confer with Daniel’s physicians. They told him only “family” members were allowed to do so, and that “partners” did not qualify.
Flanigan explained he had a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions and that he and Daniel were registered as domestic partners (in California). The Shock Trauma Center also had the records of the first hospital to which Daniel was admitted, where Flanigan was recognized as family, having spent the night in a chair by Daniel’s bed.
The Shock Trauma Center acted quite differently. For four hours, personnel kept Flanigan away from Daniel and his doctors – meanwhile allowing family members of other patients to visit their loved ones and confer with doctors. Flanigan, on the other hand, was not given the opportunity to make surgeons aware of Daniel’s wish not to have life-prolonging measures performed on him, including the insertion of a breathing tube.
After four hours, Daniel’s sister and mother arrived from out of town. Only then did the Shock Trauma Center provide information on Daniel’s status that had been repeatedly denied to Flanigan, and subsequently allow the entire family, including Flanigan, to see Daniel. By that point, Daniel was no longer conscious, his eyes were taped shut, and the two men never had the chance to say goodbye.
It remains to see what, if anything, Ehrlich can or will do to strengthen advance directives and medical powers of attorney for same-sex couples. If his solution does not give same-sex couples the absolute legal right to hospital visitation, medical decision-making, etc. Then it will fall far short of the bill he had in his hands this year.
In fact, the bill he had in his hands would have defined same-sex partners as “next of kin”—something married couples already qualify as—with the rights and protections afforded that status. Chances are the bill Erhlich may propose next year—if the wingnuts that own his party will let him—will fall short of that mark again.
Like I said before, when you’re gay it’s easy to be fooled into thinking that you’re actually a citizen. It’s times like these that we’re reminded that we are second class citizens at best, if we are indeed citizens at all.
Weasel words, nothing more.