News: President Obama - Our Equality HERO!

In the cultural competency sessions at NASW Symposium yesterday, we were just lamenting how same-sex partners have had to actually lie to gain access to their loved ones in the hospital, as well as how unfair and demeaning that can be!

This executive action is Amazing!!!  Thank you, President Obama!!


Washington Post reports:

President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients' choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans. 

The president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation

Huffington Post reports:

The designated visitors should have the same rights that immediate family members now enjoy, Obama's instructions said. It said Medicare-Medicaid hospitals, which include most of the nation's facilities, may not deny visitation and consultation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. 

The move was called a major step toward fairness for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.