hate in Rhode Island

[rm]

Much of queer history has involved loving in secret. This has also meant mourning in secret. Much of the demand for a world that required neither of these tragedies came out of the AIDS crisis. Much of my coming out to myself, and others, was initially done with this as a backdrop; it is real to me, visceral and terrifying and not so far away as it should be.

In an act of bigotry, the governor of Rhode Island has vetoed a bill giving domestic partners the right to claim the bodies of — and make funeral arrangements for — their loved ones.

Aside from its obvious practical consequences, this act says that in the governor's view gay people are not fully human and either incapable of or not entitled to the full spectrum of human emotions, including grief and love, and that the family units we have been making for centuries as best we can in even the darkest of times are, apparently, merely, figments of our imagination.

Silence = Death remains one of, if not the, most important thing I have ever learned. I know this every time someone wishes I were quieter.

Comments

[eandh99.livejournal.com]

See, I'm married to a lawyer and we had lawyer friends do the documents for us way back when we were students - there was a free lgbt legal clinic in Vancouver. Having someone ready and willing to sue the asses off people might help? Thinking of some of my activist friends. But yeah, what do you do with people who are willing to ignore valid legal documents like powers of attorney and health care directives.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

I'll adopt you.

I'm only 23, but hell. At least I'll know I have a daughter I can be proud of. :)

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

I don't care! I want to be the proud mommy of a woman who's already got her life together. I get the exciting proud stuff without having to, like, raise you or really do stuff at all. Which is great for me! =D

Anyway, in all seriousness. I'm glad that you've got someone supportive like that. Until the USA does right by you, it's important to have individuals willing to go the extra mile to make up for it. Props to your godmother for that.

[eandh99.livejournal.com]

I find this all almost incomprehensible. Like, cannot wrap my head around. We had this kind of crap behaviour by parents of AIDS victims in the 80's, which is where the documents I was talking about come from and even then it was mostly when people got really ill or died without any legal paperwork at all. Here, getting a will varied is much harder work - you have to go to court and prove undue influence or something to replace someone as executor or change the provisions. Protecting yourself is as straightforward as a clause explaining that you're leaving your family out because you've had no contact with them for X years or whatever. In fact executors are very often not family members at all, and they're the ones who have the legal authority to settle and divide the estate, make funeral arrangements etc. But then we don't elect judges either, and we do require them to have been practicing lawyers first, so they're less likely to ignore the law. It all makes me not want to visit the States - would we be treated like this if one of us fell ill or had an accident?