NATURE: “The Born Free Story: 50 Years Later” - a set on Flickr

NATURE: “The Born Free Story: 50 Years Later” - a set on Flickr: "NATURE: “The Born Free Story: 50 Years Later”"

actress, campaigner and founder and Trustee of the Born Free Foundation Virginia McKenna, OBE, filmmaker Sacha Mirzoeff and series executive producer Fred Kaufman discuss what’s changed since the rescue and release of three lion cubs by the Adamson family.

Alternative Fertilization - A first for the first - The Boston Globe

A first for the first - The Boston Globe: "A first for the first
She was the most famous baby in America after her birth in 1981 following in vitro fertilization. Yesterday, Elizabeth Comeau gave birth to a baby of her own. She shares her story."

Dorothy Height, Unsung Heroine of Civil Rights Era, Is Dead at 98 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Dorothy Height, Unsung Heroine of Civil Rights Era, Is Dead at 98 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

A social worker: Dorothy Height, a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements who was considered both the grande dame of the civil rights era and its unsung heroine, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 98.

ABC News: Obama Orders Hospitals to Allow Gay Partners Visitation, Health Care Rights - ABC News

Obama Orders Hospitals to Allow Gay Partners Visitation, Health Care Rights - ABC News

In a nod to the rights of lesbian and gay couples, President Obama has ordered the nation's hospitals to allow patients to determine for themselves who has visitation rights and who can make medical decisions.

Janice Langbehn, 41, with three of her children: David 14, Danielle, 16, and Katie, 13. Langbehn,...
(Photo by DJ Bradley)

In a memo, Obama instructed the health and human services secretary to draft new rules for hospitals that receive federal Medicare and Medicaid payments.

The order gives LGBT partners the same visitation and health proxy rights that are enjoyed by immediate family members.

Most hospitals will now be banned from denying those privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

NYT News: Aging and Gay, and Facing Prejudice in Twilight

Aging and Gay, and Facing Prejudice in Twilight

What should institutions do to help elderly, gay clients?

James Estrin/The New York Times

Even now, at 81 and with her memory beginning to fade, Gloria Donadello recalls her painful brush with bigotry at an assisted-living center in Santa Fe, N.M. Sitting with those she considered friends, “people were laughing and making certain kinds of comments, and I told them, ‘Please don’t do that, because I’m gay.’”

Jalna Perry of Boston said her guard was always up in nursing homes. 

The result of her outspokenness, Ms. Donadello said, was swift and merciless. “Everyone looked horrified,” she said. No longer included in conversation or welcome at meals, she plunged into depression. Medication did not help. With her emotional health deteriorating, Ms. Donadello moved into an adult community nearby that caters to gay men and lesbians.

So that is where Lisa Krinsky, the director of the L.G.B.T. Aging Project in Massachusetts, begins her “cultural competency” training sessions, including one last month at North Shore Elder Services in Danvers. 

In the last two years, Ms. Krinsky has trained more than 2,000 employees of agencies serving the elderly across Massachusetts. She presents them with common problems and nudges them toward solutions.  

“We need to be open and sensitive,” Ms. Krinsky said, “but not wrap them in a rainbow flag and make them march in a parade.”

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.

NYT Op-Ed: Our Fill-in-the-Blank Constitution

Our Fill-in-the-Blank Constitution
By GEOFFREY R. STONE
Constitutional law is not a mechanical exercise of just “applying the law.”

AS the Senate awaits the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice, a frank discussion is needed on the proper role of judges in our constitutional system.

So, how should judges interpret the Constitution? To answer that question, we need to consider why we give courts the power of judicial review — the power to hold laws unconstitutional — in the first place. Although the framers thought democracy to be the best system of government, they recognized that it was imperfect. One flaw that troubled them was the risk that prejudice or intolerance on the part of the majority might threaten the liberties of a minority. As James Madison observed, in a democratic society “the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended ... from acts in which the government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.” It was therefore essential, Madison concluded, for judges, whose life tenure insulates them from the demands of the majority, to serve as the guardians of our liberties and as “an impenetrable bulwark” against every encroachment upon our most cherished freedoms.

The power of judicial review to invalidate laws that disadvantage racial and religious minorities, political dissenters, people accused of crimes and others who are unlikely to have their interests fully and fairly considered by the majority. Liberal judges have ended racial segregation, recognized the principle of “one person, one vote,” prohibited censorship of the Pentagon Papers andupheld the right to due process, even at Guantánamo Bay. This approach to judicial review fits much more naturally with the concerns and intentions of people like Madison who forged the American constitutional system.