{"id":3766,"date":"2009-06-03T19:59:03","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T00:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=3766"},"modified":"2009-06-03T19:59:03","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T00:59:03","slug":"why-we-fightcontinued-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/3766","title":{"rendered":"Why We Fight&#8230;(continued)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via Box Turtle Bulletin&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.projo.com\/generalassembly\/domestic_partners_06-03-09_GSEIVLQ_v12.3e8fb61.html\"><strong>R.I. Senate votes to extend funeral rights to domestic partners<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"vitstorybody\"><span class=\"vitstorybody\"><\/p>\n<p>At a hearing earlier this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, so he could grant Hanby&rsquo;s wish for cremation &mdash; only to have that request rejected too because &ldquo;we were not legally married or blood relatives.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>After struggling for years with depression, he said, Hanby took his own        life.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"vitstorybody\"><span class=\"vitstorybody\"><\/p>\n<p>Try to picture Goldberg&#8217;s state of mind right then.&nbsp; The death of the one you love is hard enough, but this was a suicide.&nbsp; He must have been absolutely devastated.&nbsp; But then, homosexuals don&#8217;t love, they just have sex.&nbsp; So now is just the right time to twist the knife in his heart&#8230;to make sure he knows how much he is hated.\n<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"vitstorybody\"><span class=\"vitstorybody\"><\/p>\n<p>Goldberg said he tried to show the police and the state medical examiner&rsquo;s office &ldquo;our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate&rdquo; from Connecticut, but &ldquo;no one was willing to see these documents.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He said he was told the medical examiner&rsquo;s office was required to conduct a two-week search for next of kin, but the medical examiner&rsquo;s office waited a full week before placing the required ad in a newspaper. And then when no one responded, he said, they &ldquo;waited another week&rdquo; to notify another state agency of an unclaimed body.<\/p>\n<p>After four weeks, he said, a Department of Human Services employee &ldquo;took pity on me and my plight &hellip; reviewed our documentation and was able to get all parties concerned to release Ron&rsquo;s body to me,&rdquo; but then the cremation society refused to cremate Ron&rsquo;s body.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;On the same day, I contacted the Massachusetts Cremation Society and they were more than willing to work with me and cremate Ron&rsquo;s body,&rdquo; and so, &ldquo;on November 6, 2008, I was able to finally pick up Ron&rsquo;s remains and put this tragedy to rest.&rdquo;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>They treated this man, this grieving lover, like so much human garbage.&nbsp; And without a doubt they all did it, every single mother fucking one of them in this chain of events, with a sense of moral righteousness.<\/p>\n<p>The right to bury the one you loved, and shared a life together with, is just one out of the great plenty of rights heterosexual couples take for granted every single day.&nbsp; It is a safe bet, none safer, that a lot of folks in <span class=\"vitstorybody\"><span class=\"vitstorybody\">Rhode Island think extending even that one to gay people is far too much.&nbsp; <em>Homosexuals don&#8217;t love, they just have sex&#8230;<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Box Turtle Bulletin&#8230; R.I. Senate votes to extend funeral rights to domestic partners At a hearing earlier this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,16,90,46,12],"class_list":["post-3766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-gratuitous-anti-gay-hate","tag-marriage","tag-the-human-gutter","tag-the-kultar-kampf","tag-the-struggle-for-our-lives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}