Others are Important

Thanks to Lifesite News, you are about to take a voyage where many of you have not been before.

EDINBURGH, Scotland, February 16, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Nurses and other health care professionals should avoid using the terms ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ to refer to family relationships since the terms could be offensive to homosexual couples with children, a new directive published by Scotland’s National Health Service recommends.

Issued in conjunction with the country’s leading homosexual activist organization Stonewall Scotland, the publication is entitled Fair For All - The Wider Challenge: Good LGBT Practice in the NHS. Americans for Truth reported Feb.11 on the publication’s release.

The booklet calls for a “zero-tolerance policy to discriminatory language” among Scotland’s health care system. Included in discriminatory language is the use of terms that assume a traditional family structure of mother, father and children, according to the NHS directive.

“LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered] people can and do have children, sexual orientation or gender identity has nothing to do with good parenting or good child care,” the booklet states.

“Individual circumstances lead to varied family structures and parenting arrangements. It is important to be aware of this. When talking to children, consider using ‘parents‘, ‘carers’ or ‘guardians’ rather than ‘mother’ or ‘father‘.

Carers? I suppose in the interest if full disclosure I must disclose here. I disclose to being a Carer twice over. My children greet me at the door when I return from a hard day negotiating for the government. "Carer is home," they yell as I trudge over the drawbridge into the castle . "Yippee! Carer is home." It warms the cockles of my Carer heart when they do that. How could it be otherwise?

Along the same lines, the directive points out, use of the terms ‘husband’, ‘wife’ and ‘marriage’ is not acceptable since such terms exclude lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Instead, health care workers should use the terms ‘partners’ and ‘next of kin’. Since ‘next of kin’ is often understood to mean nearest blood relative, however, the booklet recommends that it may be preferable to use ‘partner, close friend or close relative’ to avoid confusion.

“This allows the patient to identify and choose who is important to them.”

Identifying who is important to them is .... well ...... important. It's the same for kids. You have no idea how long it took me to train my genetic offspring to drop the archaic and heterosexist term Dad. Not that I claim anything special because they sprang from my personal loins - genetic attachments are so .... retro ... and hurtful to who have not so spawned .... .

It was Dad this and Dad that and most embarrassing in my yoga classes when they did so. "Dad I love you. to infinity and back." I kid you not. They made such appalling statements. I blame it on their kidful youth myself. It's not like my domestic partner (who just happens by an accident of fate to be a woman, though it not necessarily need be so), and I didn't try. Why the sheer number of timeouts required to bring the genetic progeny to heel was extraordinary .... though vitally necessary for the establishment of a just society.

I assure you that I did not spank them to get them to call me "Carer." That would have been abusive. Instead I sent them to their room for six months without television or computer games. And no pizza on Fridays. It was tough I tell you, but sacrifices must be made so that hospital workers are not confused if the genetic progeny are in an accident away from school and an ambulance is called and the progeny need to ask for those who do the dishes in the residence in which they live.

Even the heterosexist, deist, Lord Baden Powell of Boy Scout fame said we must "Be prepared." If such a disreputable person understands such things can today's enlightened elites do any less. I ask you.

Other recommendations include ensuring the health care environment is visually reassuring to LGBT people, with posters and magazines on LGBT issues on display.

“Posters with positive images of same-sex couples, alongside similar material depicting opposite-sex couples, should be displayed in all areas e.g. waiting areas, hospital wards.”

In order to better ensure the comfort and security of LGBT people in the health care environment, the NHS calls for sexual identity “monitoring forms” to be included in all registration procedures for both staff and patients. The booklet recommends five reply options to the question of sexual orientation, including ‘Lesbian‘, ‘Gay‘, ‘Bisexual‘, ‘Heterosexual‘, and ‘Other‘. Sections recording gender should be changed to have three reply options, ‘Male‘, ‘Female‘, or ‘Other, “where people can define their own gender.”

I could not agree more. Through a sheer accident of fate I am a male, and my domestic partner is an accidental female. But what if I had married an "other." I could have. This is Canada, after all - the land of other possibilities, where other is a part of us.

Not at all like that place to the south where Mad George reigns without the rule of law and others are left feeling so .... otherly. I knew a person once who thought he was loon. It doesn't get more otherly than that, but I respect him for his loony courage. I recall one rude mutual acquaintance once saying to him, "But you lack feathers." ... as though feathers are the measure of a loon. It was so hurtful.

Among guidelines for implementing pro-LGBT policies in the health care system, the directive requires that management or team leader job descriptions include a mandatory commitment to combating any “discriminatory” language or attitudes among staff.

You might think I agree with that, but I don't. I object to the use of the term "combating." It is too militaristic. We should get away from using such terms. They are redolent of the patriarchy ... of a time long gone .... when "Carers" were Dads and Mums. When there were such things as ugggh .... families .... . It is time to bring a stop to the pain. We must pursue other options.