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Friday, April 13, 2007

More Rights for Gays and Lesbians

posted by on April 13 at 9:27 AM

In this week’s paper, I got an important fact wrong about the domestic partnership legislation— which passed on Tuesday afternoon.

I wrote:

the bill grants about 10 rights to domestic partners—such as allowing domestic partners to have hospital visitation rights, allowing partners to give informed consent in medical decisions, allowing partners to make funeral arrangements, and allowing partners to inherit property in the absence of a will.

That is true. However, I added:

The bill leaves a host (423 and counting according to the latest study) of other rights off the table, like access to a partner’s health insurance or pension benefits, the ability to file a wrongful-death suit if one’s partner is killed, and the right of “spousal privilege,” which would shield one half of a domestic partnership from being compelled to testify against the other.

While the new domestic partnership legislation does leave out over 400 rights, the bill was amended to include the right to sue for wrongful death.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to report the bill now includes two other rights that were not in the original version: the right to be named on a deceased partner’s death certificate, just like a spouse and (while a bit isolated, still important)—the bill gives gay or lesbian doctors the right of health care power of attorney for their partners.

Reports Rep. Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Seattle), the main co-sponsor of the bill in the House: “The existing law [said] that a health care provider cannot hold a health care power of attorney for another person unless that person is a spouse or blood relative. That has been a real problem for gay or lesbian couples where one is a doctor, because —contrary to what the opponents have been saying about how we could get all of the rights in the bill by private contract — the law actually prohibited couples from making arrangements to take care of each other.”

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