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  Don't Go to Florida: On Not Getting To See Your Dying Beloved in the Hospital

  Posted Tuesday, February 24, 2009 5:05 PM | By E.J. Graff
  Two years ago, doctors and hospital workers refused to let Janice Langbehn come into the hospital room with her partner of 17 years, Lisa Marie Pond, while Pond died. Why? Because under Florida law, Janice wasn't immediate family to Lisa—never mind that Janice tried to show everyone the signed medical power-of-attorney documents that she carried with her to the hospital. Janice is now suing for emotional distress and negligence.

  I hate these stories. My head is full of scores of them. I heard my first one nearly 20 years ago, when my friends Matt and Mark (names changed—it was a long time ago!) told me that when Mark was shot while on a business trip, the Dallas hospital that was treating him refused to tell Matt (technically a stranger) whether Mark was dead or alive. Matt called for six hours before he got the news. After being terrified by that hair-raising story, my then-beloved and I got our documents written and notarized within the week. (She's now my beloved ex, after 19 years together, but that's another story entirely.) During those 20 years, I wrote a book about the history of marriage and why same-sex couples belong. A marriage movement took shape, including some now-famous lawsuits. We won in Massachusetts, my home state, and Connecticut; we won partial partnership recognition (called things like "civil unions" or "domestic partnership" and so on) in another 10 states; we won the dubious privilege of celesbians getting full-color and front-page photo coverage in People while dating and getting married (cf: Ellen and Portia's big fat white wedding). Meanwhile, most of the United States came to agree that same-sex partners ought to, at a minimum, be able to hold hands in the hospital, for God's sake.

  And still, because Lisa Marie Pond—who was on a cruise ship with her beloved and their three children—had the misfortune of having a heart attack while off the coast of Miami, she had to die alone, without the woman she loved.

  It breaks my heart.

  Filed under: LGBT rights, same-sex marriage, civil unions

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

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