On Obama’s executive order, some are ok with it, others have issues:
On Friday morning, President Obama granted hospital visitation rights to individuals who are not married or blood related to patients, including homosexual couples. While the Catholic Heath Association supported the move, the Family Research Council expressed concern that the directive “undermines the definition of marriage.”
President Obama’s Friday statement mandated that the Department of Health Human Services prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation. In a memo he noted that across America, “patients are denied the kindness and caring of a loved one at their sides,” be it a widow with no children, members of religious orders or “gay and lesbian Americans who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives.”
And, in my view, both CHA and Family Research Council are right – it is ok to allow loved ones access to the ill, and this is an effort on the part of Obama to undermine traditional marriage and pander to a constituency which lavished support on his 2008 effort.
My particular gripe is the manner in which it is done – the President ordering people about. This is too much in line with what has gone wrong with our nation and whatever the merits of the action, the President shouldn’t have done it. Allow the people, in their localities, to work this out as they see fit.
