The Slippery Slope of Compassion

According to CNN, Americans support President Obama's memorandum allowing gay and lesbian couples to visit each other in the hospital by a margin of 9-1.  This law was all about compassion, inspired by heartbreaking stories like Janice Langbehn, who was denied access to her dying partner in a Miami hospital, or Sharon Reed, who was removed from her dying partner's hospital room by a homophobic "nurse from hell."

Compassion? That didn't stop a right wing hissy fit over the move.  Obama's memorandum wasn't at all about compassion or decency. It was a step toward same-sex marriage, and therefore should never have happened.

Remember that thousands of gay men were denied access to their loved ones when the AIDS crisis began in the 1980's.

Tom Head of About.com  points out that "Obama is receiving the wrath of several right-wing groups and bloggers who think that hospital visitation rights = homosexual orgies and forced gay weddings."

The Family Research Council is one such group.  Earlier this year, they suggested that homosexuality should be criminalized in the United States. Now they're arguing that LGBT hospital patients deserve to die alone.  They are caliling Obama's memorandum pandering to a radical special interest group; undermining the definition of marriage; and furthering a big-government federal takeover of even the smallest details of the nation's health care system."

Another right wing leader said that  President Obama created a "homosexual Roe v. Wade" in issuing the hospital visitation rights memorandum. Martin is planning on taking this memorandum and using it as a springboard to get GOP candidates elected this November.

I can't wait to see the TV ads on this subject.

(Thanks to change.org for much of the info in this post.)