Separate is unequal — and inhumane

David Link on Independent Gay Forum comments on the court ruling upholding a Miami hospital's right to deny visitation rights to the lesbian partner of a hospitalized woman even in the presence of health-care proxies and powers of attorney:

According to a press release, the court ruled that “the hospital has neither an obligation to allow their patients’ visitors nor any obligation whatsoever to provide their patients’ families, healthcare surrogates, or visitors with access to patients in their trauma unit.”

As a strictly legal matter, that may be true (the decision can still be appealed). But as a moral matter, it is appalling. Hospitals came into being because of human compassion for illness and suffering. Whatever their legal obligations, preventing a woman from seeing her dying partner until the priest arrives to deliver Last Rites is a level of cruelty that should go down in the annals of depravity. For the record, the hospital is Jackson Memorial ("One of America's finest medical facilities"), a name that should also be recorded for posterity.

As a result of the hospital's action, Lisa Marie Pond, longtime partner of Janice Langbehn, died alone. Jackson Memorial not only defended such atrociously soulless behavior, it stands by its policy still. How about extraordinary rendition for heartless hospital administrators?