Equality

In 2008 Clay M. Greene lost a loved one. He lost his lover, his partner in life, his significant other. What makes this story of lost truly heartbreaking, is that the County Sonoma stole this person away from him. They stole his house, most of his belongings, and put him in a retirement home. Because of Sonoma, Harold had to die without his partner Clay by his side.

It started when Harold took a spill down the stairs in front of the couple's house. He was badly hurt, and needed to be taken to the hospital. The two men were not stupid, they had previous to all this made arrangements for just this occasion, with living wills, power of attorney, and medical directives each listing each other. Despite all this, Clay was refused the right to see Harold, nor was he consulted in anything regarding his health.

In the ongoing months the County would go on to petition to a judge for access to Harold's bank account to pay for his medical bills, listing Clay off as simply a roommate. After gaining limited access to the account, they would go on to auctioning off the items in the house, and selling the house back to the land lord. Harold died without Clay, and Clay was left without a home, possessions, or any reminder of his partner save a photo album Harold made while being treated.

Clay is now suing the county, and is likely to receive a lot of money with all the glaringly illegal actions the people of Sonoma made. But is there any amount of money that can make up for losing someone you loved, and not being able to be there due to no fault of your own? It's terrible what these people did, they flat out stole from two elderly men. Reading this story, it got me to wondering... Would all of this, this act of barbarism against these two men, would it have happened if they were married?

Now I'm not about to start ringing the discrimination and hate crime bell. The motives of the hospital are not known, and could very easily be driven by money and not anti-gay sentiment. The fact that Somona voted in a heavy majority against Prop 8 does show that this is not an issue with the area. What I'm talking about is simple equality, the question of if this could possibly happen if, like a man and a woman, these two men who loved each other could be legally defined as married.

A major argument against gay marriage, though more a justification than an actual argument, that gay men and women can gain any rights a married couple can, and there for already have equal rights. The problem with that is that a straight couple can simply make one action, marriage, and gain these rights, where a gay couple must jump through hoops on several legal procedures. More work to gain the same thing is not equal, and without a singular definition, as we can see in this case, can easily be ignored.

These two men, Harold and Clay, did the deeds. They jumped through the hoops, they did everything they could to make sure that their partner could be there and be the one in charge if the unforeseen were to come to be. Yet here it stands, their wishes, their legal rights, all undone with a simple ignorance to their will. These papers meant to equal the rights of a married couple were ignored, they were forgotten. Clay Greene was forced into a retirement home, with the hopes he would never be heard from again.

But what if they were able to be wed, were wed? What if there was a strict definition labeling these two as spouses, as family? Could the abuse these two men endured possible have happened? I find it infuriating that this happened when it could have so easily been avoided with a simple piece of paper.

The fact that these two men were not married does not make them any less to each other. The fact that they were not married does not mean they weren't family. The fact that they were not married does not mean they did not love each other as much as one can love an other. The fact that they were not married meant that the people paid to keep them well were able to rob them of everything they had, including the right to die together.