Archive for February, 2010
Hospital rights victory in New York
For over 17 years, New York has struggled to attain medical decision making rights for its patients. Not anymore! Just two days ago, New York voted YES on the Family Health Care Decisions Act! It’s been a long time coming!
The FHCDA helps protect people who don’t document their wishes. It gives family members and friends (including broadly defined domestic partners) the authority to make treatment decisions for incapacitated patients who have not signed a health care proxy or left specific oral or written treatment instructions.
Patients in NY now can have someone they love and trust visit them in the hospital make medical decisions for them, without regard to marital status!
For more information, read Governor Paterson’s press release.
Congratulations, New Yorkers!
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health care
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Feb 26th, 2010 by Nicky
Why TANF must give economic aid & help all relationships
Two heartrending news articles crossed my desk this morning. Both highlight the reasons that TANF (the main federal anti-poverty program) should focus on economic assistance. They also point to the importance of healthy relationships for all people, regardless of marital status. If any federal money is going to pay for relationship education, it really must be available to people in every type of relationship.
Women’s e-News details how the recession contributed to an increase in domestic violence.
The New York Times details how evictions have a disparate impact on unmarried African-American women.
President Obama’s budget proposal offers a one-year extension and expansion of marriage programs. Few details are available yet, but we’re inclined to agree with our colleague Wendy Mink, who writes
far from a one-shot deal, this is a shot-in-the-arm to proponents of privatizing poverty reduction through patriarchal family norms. Significantly, despite economic hard times, the budget request does not include increases in cash grants to struggling families, a suspension of time limits on eligibility for assistance, an end to sanctions, or a change in rules so that more families in need of assistance can actually get it. We need to insist on changes to the structure of TANF, not the structure of families.
If you haven’t signed our TANF petition yet, now is the time!
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economics & poverty, marriage promotion
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Feb 19th, 2010 by Nicky
Letter to the Update editor: puzzled by points on first lady
I am puzzled by some parts of Jaclyn Geller’s article about Michelle Obama.
The first paragraph refers to Michelle Obama’s “natal children.” Is it supposed to be a problem that she gave birth to them herself??
Geller says that in a magazine interview, “Obama urged women to look at the “hearts” and “souls” of potential husbands and stated that she had always made mothering her first priority.” Aside from the word “husbands,” neither of these ideas relates to marriage; one is about wise choice of a partner, and one is about parenthood. I’m confused: Would the author prefer that women NOT consider “hearts” and “souls”, and is there something wrong with striving to be a good parent?
It’s odd to complain about parenthood being part of Michelle Obama’s public identity without noting how the media during and just after the election fawned over Barack Obama’s involved parenting style and/or the fact that Michelle’s mother moved into the White House to take care of the children when Michelle is away doing her work as first lady.
There are two references to Michelle Robinson changing her last name to Obama without any acknowledgment of the difference in the effect of those two names. Robinson is an extremely common name (I’ve known two Michelle Robinsons personally) and Obama is not; might changing her name have been a pragmatic strategy to give herself a unique identity? I think it’s actually sexist to view Obama as HIS name when it is in fact now HER name as well.
- ‘Becca Stallings
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letters to the editors
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Feb 18th, 2010 by Nicky
AtMP’s e-newsletter is now online
AtMP members world-wide received Update, our email newsletter, last week. We hit some technical obstacles to publishing all the articles in one place, but you can see them individually at the following links:
A First Lady We Can Really Admire? by Jaclyn Geller
The Marriage Index by Arcenia Harmon
Meet a Board Member: Michele Hirsch
If you’d like to comment on an article or send a letter to the editor, please click “Comments” below.
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letters to the editors
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Feb 18th, 2010 by Nicky
Marital status, race and ethnicity
Really glad to see the impact of marital status discrimination addressed in Race Talk. With 70% of African-American adults unmarried (compared to 45% of Whites and 49% of Latinos in the US), every law or economic policy that uses marital status has a disparate impact on the Black community. AtMP agrees wholeheartedly that
it’s time to rethink those norms and accommodate a changing society that no longer consists of a married majority. It’s unfair to reward the life choices of some and not others when all are valid realities that should be treated as such.
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economics & poverty, race & ethnicity, singlism, taxes
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Feb 16th, 2010 by Nicky
Different-sex domestic partners pay more at Syracuse U.
Last year we noted Virginia‘s offer to let state employees share benefits with household members regardless of relationship, but charge them full price while deeply subsidizing benefits for spouses. Syracuse University now joins that unwelcome trend.
For several years, AtMP members and fellow Syracuse graduate students tried to persuade the University to provide inclusive domestic partner benefits. In late January, the University announced it was “including opposite-sex domestic partners in health care benefits and providing a $1,000 offset to a federal tax on same-sex domestic partner benefits.” Huh?
Obviously, domestic partner benefits are taxed as income regardless of the partners’ gender, while spouses’ benefits are tax-free. Syracuse’s calculations have nothing to do with federal law, and everything to do with valuing (or fearing) workers in same-sex relationships more than workers in unmarried different-sex relationships, and/or endorsing the idea that employees should marry for health benefits.
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health care
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Feb 12th, 2010 by Nicky
