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Governor of Wisconsin moves to ban same-sex hospital visits
By Peter SmithMay 18th, 2011, 12:30 pmComments (60)
A newish domestic-partnership law in Wisconsin (passed in 2009 by a then-Democratic legislature) allows gay couples hospital visitation rights. In a remarkably heartless response, Republican governor Scott Walker (above) has just petitioned a judge to allow the state to stop defending the law. In other words, Republicans hate big government, except when they want big government to actually keep you from visiting a possibly dying loved one. In the hospital.
In the meantime, here's a story about a Miami hospital forcing a lesbian to die alone by keeping her partner of eighteen years out of the room. This apparently is something Scott Walker not only has no problem with, but is actively petitioning to preserve. Stay classy, Wisconsin.
Tags
gay marriage
Scott Walker
Commentarium (60 Comments)
May I be the first to say, fuck this guy.
No, you may not. You're a couple months too late for that.
Well I just meant on this post. I've not liked the fucker for awhile now, but this just makes me want to do terrible terrible things.
Fuck this goofy Nicholas Cage looking motherfucker. And fuck the people who voted him in.
Seriously. I was considering moving to WI for work but decided not to since every time they came up in the media it was due to this backwoods hick blocking something good or pushing for something bad.
As someone from Wisconsin, I'm happy with your decision to stay away. We don't need your kind of intolerance.
Wisconsinite, may I ask you who's intolerant? Isn't it perhaps the pervert who tells me who I am allowed to pay a visit in a hospital?!
@George - By the pervert, you mean who exactly?
@Wisoninite- maybe pervert was the wrong word, but bigot is right on target for your govenor
@Wisconsinite - Tolerant people don't have to tolerate intolerance. Seriously, I really hope you didn't vote for this bigoted asshole, but if you did, kindly go fuck yourself.
I am also from Wisconsin and I would welcome you with open arms. This guy is a bigot and is ruining Wisconsin with all his bs!
@Joe - never let the facts get in the way of smearing someone. Read Logic N. Reason below. You'll all be embarrassed.
I cried reading the article about the women in the article about Florida. I'm a straight woman, and I'm engaged to be married to the most wonderful man I've ever known. The thought of something like this happening is the worst possible thing I could imagine. To every one of you bigoted, backwards, bible-thumping, "family values" politicians or supporters, go fuck yourselves. I was going to say something more eloquent, but I don't have it in me. You're the ones that deserve to die alone.
I may die alone but it will be a nice, straight world in heaven.
hahaha yeah. you keep telling yourself that.
Hey blah blah, you really think you're getting in with that attitude? I think Jesus had something to say about those who judge...
The story about the dying woman is from four years back. It may be that the hospital wouldn't be so difficult now ... I'd hope not anyway; that sounds like a real nightmare for the family. (Yes, family. What else will you call the dying person's kids and their mother?)
As history has showed us…I believe that the tabloids can go ahead start their instigation on his love affair with gay prostitutes or underage boys. Give it 6 to 12 months.
When you say "ban" when you mean "stop disallowing hospitals to ban" you reduce your credibility. Scott Walker is a vile enough glob of santorum that the truth makes a sensational enough headline without your deceptive embellishments.
No deception intended - I just don't see a difference. The effect is the same, right?
I'm with "Me". I mean, I'm gay, and it's fucking horrible, but would it really be so hard to simply state the facts? Do you really not see the difference between saying that "the government would prevent you from seeing your loved ones" and saying "the government would not defend your right to see your loved ones." Both are loathsome, but only one is happening here.
well, not to diss the average american's ability to read english (tho that is pretty low, seriously honey comes from BEARS?) when a journalist substitutes 'ban" in place of "stop disallowing hospitals to ban", which btw means the same thing he's just communicating the facts to a wider audience instead of leaving a lot of people going 'wha?' in front of their computers.
and frankly, news like this need to get out to as many people as possible.
As a Canadian and a physician, I find the whole concept of the hospital or the government determined who is allowed in a patient's room completely strange.
That's how we do it in the U S of A. Truth, justice, libefreedom....
As another Canadian, I don't get how a country so obsessed with freedom of rights can possibly take so many of them away for anyone who isn't 'normal'. My friends, relatives and I haven't been able to come up with a rational reason for it yet.
In Canada, if you have an unconscious person in a hospital, do you let just anyone into their room?
The Canadian system sought to deny a 13 month old a tracheotomy which allowed him several more months of life. My question is this: How is the view from your glass house? From ours, the view is great but I refrain from throwing stones.
^^ Source Please.
Your glass house seems to have some rock sized holes in it. Maybe you're not using the expression quite correctly?
Assuming you directed the comment to me, Fact:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2011/02/28/wdr-maraachli-rel...
and dozens of others. The kindly Canadian health care system was willing to move the baby home and then remove him from the breathing machine, ending his life. Welcome to national health care - compassion doesn't have a price tag.
What a bloody pervert and hypocrite! It’s not his cup of tea who is allowed for visits in a hospital. The patient may decide, the patient only. Let me say it again: This governor is a bloody pervert and hypocrite!
So you're a fan of the Governor? You should read Me's comments.
I invite you to move here to England - we're rather more civilised... And you don't need a credit card before the hospital will save your life, either.
And I invite you to the US where your preconceived notions will be dispelled.
Note, too, that NHS hospitals are frequently compared to those in the third world, particularly as they relate to nosocomial infections. Seriously, the NHS hospitals are pig styes.
You wouldn't happen to have private insurance, would you?
Source?
@KingPellinore - Feel free to inform yourself. It's not difficult and I'm not your librarian.
You must have the information already, since you present your anecdotes as fact. You bear the burden of proof.
You bear the burden of informing yourself. Won't believe it unless someone gift wraps and presents you with the proof? Go for it. It doesn't change reality one iota.
Well, I consider myself informed and my information is contradictory to what you have presented. My sources disagree with yours, so I was hoping to see yours in order to gain perspective.
But, since you continue to refuse to share them, I'm going to assume you don't have any.
@KingPellinore - Feel free to assume whatever you like.
I just don't see why we are still fighing this. We vote, If you don't like someone VOTE there ass out of that office. We need new blood in this offices. I am gay and just see this fight going on and on. We need to use our vote a little better next time. If I could move out of this place I would but when you have no job that is hard to do. I guess I will have to keep voting, What about you????
You are an idiot. Democracy and civil engagement is not just something that happens once every four years. It is an ongoing process.
Within three years this douche will be caught with an 18 year old male intern, or a gay prostitute and a bunch of meth. It's a law of physics.
Seriously America? It is 2011 and you are still wasting your fucking time trying to define what and who constitutes a family unit! Its getting old! Living in South Africa at the moment, and even though our shit list is longer than US, our Government has stopped arguing about gay marriages (2007 already) FFS!
Read Logic N. Reason and you'll see that the issue is entirely miscast by nerve.
My translation matrix must be broken, because I missed the part where you explained the basis for your (false) opinion that Republicans want to keep loved ones away from each other in hospitals. Clearly you did not read the article on which you based this opinion, nor apparently did you do any investigation of the facts whatsoever. What is sad is that I'm about to write a more credible and truthful post here than is contained in your propaganda above, after about 45 seconds of research:
In 2009, faced with a WI Constitution that banned gay marriage and an electorate unwilling to support democratic change to the Constitution, the Democrats in the WI legislature and governor's office passed a law giving WI registered domestic partners many of the same state-recognized benefits of marriage, including barring hospitals - including religious hospitals from denying domestic partners visitation rights. A family rights group sued alleging that the law violated WI's constitution (this argument had sufficient merit to survive initial court challenges). WI's attorney general refused to defend it, so WI's Governor (a Dem), hired an outside private lawyer - at taxpayer expense - to do so. A gay rights group then also intervened and hired lawyers - at their expense - to also help defend the domestic partner law. So in 2011, faced with the daunting task of preserving government worker employment within a sustainable budget, Scott Walker's administration decided that having TWO taxpayer-funded defense efforts in a triple-stacked legal defense team was unnecessary. Thereafter, various liberal media propaganda outlets staffed by professional bloggers with no journalism training or news ethics constraints seized upon the news to inaccurately spin it into an attack piece on Governor Walker and brainwash unsuspecting readers into believing opinion reported as fact which was, in fact, false.
Without doing more investigation, I suspected there might be more to this story. Thanks for this.
Respectfully--you can frame this as purely legal/financial issue, but that seems to me to be obfuscating a pretty serious ethical issue underneath it. What if the question were the right of mixed-race couples to hospital visitations? SOMEBODY wants to keep loved ones away from each other in hospitals, right? Or is your argument that Scott Walker thinks human rights are great, and shakes his head sadly at the fact that his state just can't afford to defend them?
What legal issue is "obfuscated" that can't be uncovered by the two defense teams? The issue isn't that the state can't defend them, the issue they're already being defended. Since you feel so strongly about this, I certainly hope that you've written a large check to underwrite the defense.
And what's the ridiculous straw man of mixed-race couples? You should be better than that.
How is the mixed-race couple comparison a straw man? It is an exact equivalence.
Absolutely disgusting. DISGUSTING.
I live in WI and have to deal with this guy's ridiculous bullsh**. Truly it sucks to know he'll screw up Wisconsin just in time when I become a partner to my boyfriend and everything goes to crap.
HOLY FUCK I AM LATE BUT I AM SO ANGRY
FUCK THIS GUY
Thanks for adding so much to the debate. Seriously, seriously helpful.
Don't like gay marriage? Don't get one. Don't like abortions? Don't get one. Don't like drugs? Don't do them. Don't like sex? Don't have it. Don't like your rights taken away? Don't take away anyone else's.
Someone needs to take something important away from this guy and maybe he'll understand how dumb and how unnatural this petition is. Leaving a lesbian to die alone because she loves a woman? SERIOUSLY? There are much worse things in life that you should be fighting for. Get over yourself.
Now you say something