A Loss For Words

I’ve been sitting here this morning reading the comments posted on my local newspaper’s website in relation to Florida’s Amendment 2 and I just can’t fathom the way people think these days. I have read comments both for and against the Amendment that range from the clear and concise thought out type of reply to the downright completely hostile and bigoted reply. There has been the usual rhetoric of religious views being spouted to proclaim that gay marriage is an affront to god and that homosexuals are that way by choice and not by birth since god would never make a homosexual in his image. There has also been the by now stupid saying of “let gays marry, why should they be the only ones without a miserable marriage”. But by far the dumbest thing I have read in these comments was from someone saying that most people who voted for Amendment 2 don’t have a problem with homosexuals or even with homosexuals living together as a family, though of course the idea of them raising children is just sickening to them. My question to them is if they don’t have a problem with gays living together as a family, then why the hell did you vote for this amendment? There was already a ban on gay marriage in the state of Florida to begin with, four separate bans in fact, so why be even more bigoted and discriminatory and take away their ability to be safely covered by insurance or medical emergency choices.

The Pro-Amendment 2 side is continuously saying that those affected by this amendment can still get insurance or make decisions for a sick partner and that’s true to a degree. Take my predicament as an example, I don’t have a job so I do not have an employer at all that offers any sort of medical, dental, or accidental death coverage. My WIFE (because I will call her what I want no matter how much you whine), has a job and through her employer she is able to get all of that insurance coverage I just mentioned and if we were actually married with wedding license and all that nonsensical paperwork I would be covered under her insurance as her spouse. However we are not “married” instead we are in a domestic partnership which prior to Nov. 4th was accepted and insurance coverage was offered, which we took, at a slightly higher cost than as a married couple would pay but it was insurance and we needed it so we took it. So right there you see it still wasn’t exactly fair to a domestic partnership insurance-wise, they paid more than the heterosexual married couples but at least they could still get insurance coverage for the both of them. Now Post-Nov. 4th all benefits that we and other domestic partnerships would have been able to receive are now gone, I will not be covered under her insurance meaning if I get horribly sick and need to be hospitalized before I find a job and get insurance from that employer, we are thoroughly screwed financially since we have no hope of paying for any serious medical bills. Yes I could have gotten insurance through the state after I left my last employer, it’s called COBRA insurance and I have no idea what that name stands for. However the price for such insurance is more per month than what I made in a month’s salary at my last job so there was no hope of being able to pay for that insurance either.

Now medical decisions, if one half of a domestic partnership had been hospitalized before Nov. 4th then the other half would have been able to make decisions of medical care for their ill partner. That includes rehabilitation care, surgical authorization, new treatment permission, and even DNR orders (Do Not Resuscitate, “pulling the plug”). Of course now Post-Nov. 4th that responsibility would now fall to the next of kin within the sick person’s family such as mother, father, siblings, or even children and as many of us know due to media, television, and movies there are some families that do not agree with the choices that their family member (who is now the ill one) has made with their lives. And because now they have the responsibility to make decisions for their ill relation they might take the opportunity to get back at them or even the partner that they do not approve of by either keeping the person on life support even though the partner knows that they would not want to be kept in a vegetative state or even refusing to allow a surgical procedure that may be risky or somewhat dangerous simply because they “don’t want their baby to be cut up before they go up to god”. Now is that really in the best interest of the hospitalized half of the partnership, no it isn’t but by law now the hospital would be forced to adhere to whatever the non-partner family decided to do even though they might not wish to do so either they would have to.

Not quite at a loss for words am I? Oh well, time to write something else for later or tomorrow, eat a pickle.