Archive for April, 2009
More about the NY Family Health Care Decisions Act
Tuesday was a successful and educational day in Albany. AtMP co-founder Marshall Miller and I met with nine state lawmakers and/or their legislative staff, and met dozens of fellow members of the Family Decisions Coalition. In total, Coalition members visited 59 legislators.
We learned a great deal about the Act and its history. Most important: it does provide a challenge mechanism for potential surrogates, so we revised AtMP’s recommendations.
Most incredible: the Act has been proposed every year for the past 16 years! This year it has the best chance of passing, because most key factions have been mollified. For example, one faction had long opposed giving domestic partners the same status as spouses. In recent years, however, bills on hospital visitation and burial that treat domestic partners and spouses equally have successfully passed both houses and been signed into law.
Nicky at NY state capitol building to support passage of FHCDA
Hospital rights in NY to be gained through law, not marriage
Members of AtMP’s email list may have noticed that we’re paying a lot of attention to hospital rights (a catch-all term for people’s ability to visit and make medical decisions for each other in emergency situations). As a native New Yorker myself, I was shocked to discover that New Yorkers have fewer medical decision-making rights than most other Americans.
Advocates of marriage equality talk about health care decision making as if it depends on the right to marry. For example, a leading NY marriage equality web page says “We are routinely denied access to such fundamental protections as medical decision-making authority.” The linkage of medical decision making to marriage is misleading. Married New Yorkers do not have the right to make medical decisions for their spouses in the absence of written directives, except in ‘do not resuscitate’ situations. Neither parents, siblings nor close friends have this right – it does not exist in NY State.
(Of course, all competent NY adults do have the right to designate health care proxies and to choose whether to have extraordinary resuscitation using state-approved documentation. Unfortunately, few New Yorkers do the paperwork. And, unmarried New Yorkers have great protections for hospital visitation.)
A proposal called the Family Health Care Decisions Act would fix this situation. I’ll present AtMP’s recommendations for making it even stronger when I visit lawmakers in Albany next Tuesday.
If you live in NY, please urge your state senators to co-sponsor the act.
More big names want government out of the marriage business
Many thanks to AtMP’s co-founders for sending these clips:
About Ted Haggard
Prior to my crisis, I was for equality under the law no matter how people grouped. Whether it was two old spinsters living together or a homosexual couple or a heterosexual couple, I think it ought to be the same under the law. But prior to my crisis, I thought the word ‘marriage,’ I thought it was worth defending the definition of it — the traditional definition of it, and I no longer believe that. … I think the government should recognize the union between people whether they’re gay or not in whatever the language they choose, whether they call it a marriage or a civil union, it’s up to them. If the government is going to be in the business of recognizing people grouped together as couples, then they need to that across the board. It’s a big change for me.
Con Law Prof Douglas Kmiec of Pepperdine can be viewed on the popular comedy show “The Colbert Report” in the April 16, 2009 episode here. Kmiec appeared on the show to promote his book, Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama, released last September. But the main topic of discussion was same-sex marriage. Kmiec appears at the conclusion of the show – after Colbert’s parody of the National Organization for Marriage advertisement, which Frank Rich discussed in his NYT column today here. Kmiec’s argument on the Colbert show is that the state should not be in the business of marriage, but should protect and support certain relationships, including it seems same-sex couples, and excluding, it seems, polygamous ones. Marriage, Kmiec seems to say, is a religious affair which should be separate from the state. Kmiec thus comes very close on the show to arguing for a marriage abolitionist position.
Whoa, what a month!
To all you long-term members, allies and newbies:
April has been so eventful!
Nicky was in the process of helping AtMP move a NEW office in Brooklyn. We are very excited about that! But, our mailing address and phone number are still the same.
We’ve also been hit with the Travel Bug. Jessica (AtMP intern) was in Boston for Spring Break, Nicky heads to DC this Friday and Albany this Tuesday. AtMP is trying to pass a new bill that would provide greater hospital rights for New Yorkers.
We are now back and in the process of updating our blog, so sit tight everyone! New info will be posted on the blog within the next few days, if not hours!
Keep track of our blog. We will not disappoint!
Thank you!
