I received the following email from the Human Rights Campaign. I am passing it on to our readers of The Pagan and the Pen and asking that you do the same as well.
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Last week, President Obama issued an historic memorandum to help ensure equal access to hospital visits and decision-making rights for same-sex couples.
It’s a critical step forward for the rights of same-sex couples, one we’ve been working on with the White House for the past year.
The Department of Health and Human Services must issue regulations implementing the President’s directive, and those won’t go into effect for at least several months. If you’re part of a same-sex couple and you want to make the most of those forthcoming protections and protect your family as much as possible right now – you must have the proper legal documentation in place.
So what documents do you need exactly? You’ll need visitation forms to make sure your family and friends can visit you, as well as a health care proxy and living will to ensure that those who know you the best can make medical decisions on your behalf in an emergency.
You can find out more and download sample forms at: http://www.hrc.org/issues/protect-your-visitation-and-decision-making-rights.htm
This is also a good time to let you know about two other great resources from HRC.
The first is the Healthcare Equality Index, our groundbreaking nationwide report on healthcare facilities’ policies around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. This index was a key resource in our efforts with the White House on this memorandum – and you can use it to find out the policies of your nearest hospital. The next edition of the Healthcare Equality Index is due to be released in early June.
The second is a very useful list of legal documents to help you protect your family – until same-sex couples are granted the same rights as all couples, everywhere.
And one last thing! Whether or not you’re in a same-sex relationship, please, please, share this information on Facebook and Twitter today.
No one else should find themselves shut out of a loved one’s hospital room.
Sincerely,
Joe Solmonese
President
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C.H. SCARLETT
The Pagan & the Pen ~ An Online Magazine! 
It’s about time that the wheels started to move.
I’m so damn sick of the right-wing Christians who think they have a right to define what family is. Family is a flexible and ever-changing thing and has been for many years. What they claim family is has not (if it ever did) existed for decades.
GLBT families are entitled to equality just as much as any other family. How would they feel if someone told them they could not visit their loved ones in the hospital? Or have any control over their medical care because–I don’t know–that they were Baptist instead of Catholic. Or e.g. because they didn’t give birth to a child?
Kudos for Obama for starting the wheels rolling and to hell frankly with those who are heartless or ignorant enough to say that this is destroying America. Yeah, that’s the kind of ignorance that our forefathers fled to America to escape from in the first place.
Hey, there remember a little piece of paper called The Declaration of Independence or maybe one known as The Constitution? It’s the 21st century not the damn Dark Ages–get over yourselves!
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(Warning, this may sound like I am flying off topic but I swear I have a point lol) I brought this up to a friend a couple of days ago. I know that the world is in a state of coming chaos, the economy is shot and supposedly there are pissed off militias forming (which I think is BS). I know we have the horrid revelations, that people have misinterpreted the Mayan Prophecies, and that nearly everyone believes that the world is going to sh*t.
Now while I believe that sometimes everything has to break down and fall apart in order to be rebuilt into something better…I don’t believe this is the case. Part of me holds onto the fact that just because some people want chaos or want the world to go to hell, that doesn’t mean its going to happen.
Obama represented change. That’s what he was bringing to the table and that’s what we are seeing now. It may not be perfect change yet. It may not be a done deal. But already I can see certain issues changing—especially concerning LGBT issues. That takes a lot for me to say since I hardly trust any government at all lol. But I do believe we are going through the growing pains of change now…and that the only end we may see is to the old world thinking that you described Jesse. Here’s hoping.
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Yeah it feels so great to hear that, i think many people would be happy now.
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