Elderly Gay Couple Forcibly Separated, Abused, Robbed By County Officials

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county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold diedClay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property.

Again, remember that they ""

Elderly Gay Couple Forcibly Separated, Abused, Robbed By County Officials in California | Slog | The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper

This is outrageous. Thanks, conservatives, for lobbying against equal protection under the law. Prop. 8 (California) made it impossible for them to be considered family.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O'Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O'Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR.

Still, I doubt that even a settlement in the millions would placate Clay, seeing as the state denied him from even seeing his partner during the last few months of his life.

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@RationalAltruism,

The same could ( and probably has) happen in any state without Community Property laws, to an unmarried heterosexual couple, even with children involved.
Why should a gay couple have more rights than straights?
Given the knowledge that they weren't protected by law, they should certainly have made arrangements in their 20 plus years together concerning ownership of property at least, unless they were woefully ignorant of the status of gays in legal terms.

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@Curmudgeon,

Curmudgeon;71297 wrote:

Why should a gay couple have more rights than straights?

I don't think they should. But they should have the right to have comparable partnerships. They'd been living together for a long time; they most likely would have wanted to have their partnership be legally recognized had it not been outlawed or up in the air.

Curmudgeon;71297 wrote:

Given the knowledge that they weren't protected by law, they should certainly have made arrangements in their 20 plus years together concerning ownership of property at least, unless they were woefully ignorant of the status of gays in legal terms.

That's the thing, they did, for the most part:

RationalAltruism;71288 wrote:

Again, remember that they ""

However, evidently it wasn't enough for whichever bureaucrat who decided to separate them and auction off their property; would the judge have been able to portray Clay as Harold's "roommate" had they had a more legally recognized partnership? Would visitation rights be denied as well? I don't think it would have been as likely.

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@Curmudgeon,

Curmudgeon;71297 wrote:

The same could ( and probably has) happen in any state without Community Property laws, to an unmarried heterosexual couple, even with children involved.
Why should a gay couple have more rights than straights?
Given the knowledge that they weren't protected by law, they should certainly have made arrangements in their 20 plus years together concerning ownership of property at least, unless they were woefully ignorant of the status of gays in legal terms.

Why are you blaming the victims? :dunno:

Is this supposed to be justification, for their mistreatment? I don't think anybody is asking for greater rights, but simply EQUAL RIGHTS for homosexuals. Which I assumed is what they were guaranteed under the US constitution, so why does state law override Federal Constitution?

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@RationalAltruism,

I am not blaming the victims. I am just tossing out an observation about their situation.Is comparing them to a heterosexual couple or questioning their foresight accusation or blame?

I say they should have been aware of the situation and should have had clear individual ownership of property at least, rather than trusting that local agencies might see things in their favor, despite current law and feelings about gays.

Quote:

But they should have the right to have comparable partnerships.

Whether they "should" have such a right bears not on their situation under current law.

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@Curmudgeon,

Curmudgeon;71302 wrote:

RationalAltruism wrote:
But they should have the right to have comparable partnerships.

Whether they "should" have such a right bears not on their situation under current law.

Similarly, before the civil rights movement, whether blacks should have had the right to vote did not bear "on their situation under current law" of that time, but that doesn't mean we can't judge the ethics of the current law, nor that we can't analyze the causes of current law.

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@Curmudgeon,

Curmudgeon;71302 wrote:

Whether they "should" have such a right bears not on their situation under current law.

Of course it does, How exactly do you think unjust laws get changed?

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Elderly Gay Couple Forcibly Separated, Abused, Robbed By County Officials

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