Surprising Unity on Va. Hospital Visit Bill

Conservatives Support Right That Includes Gays

RICHMOND -- A measure championed by gay men and lesbians that would give hospital patients explicit authority to choose their visitors is quietly coursing through the Virginia General Assembly.

The bill, sponsored by Del. David L. Englin (D-Alexandria), is not intended specifically to protect domestic partners. Its goal is to eliminate the messy family feuds that often occur when relatives of hospital patients block visitors they don't like, he said.

But the bill is being hailed by Equality Virginia, a gay and lesbian group that led an unsuccessful fight last year against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. The fact that the measure would extend a protection to same-sex couples has eluded most state lawmakers, who, despite many deeply conservative members who adamantly supported last year's amendment, have voted unanimously in favor of the bill.

"Everybody had an opportunity to look at the bill and weigh in," Englin said. "There was nothing nefarious going on there. People understand that this bill helps a large number of people, including particular groups of people like the gay community and the elderly, who are especially vulnerable to these hospital visitation situations."

Several lawmakers, including self-described conservatives, said they have no problem protecting a patient's right to choose visitors, even if that means extending protection to same-sex partners.

"I don't see why it would matter to anybody," said Sen. James K. "Jay" O'Brien Jr. (R-Fairfax). "Why would anybody say no to that?"

But Del. Thomas D. Gear (R-Hampton) said it gives him "some heartburn" to learn after the fact that the bill might protect gay men and lesbians.

Englin's bill, which was passed unanimously by a House of Delegates committee, the full House and a Senate committee, would require hospitals to add a provision to their visitation policies allowing adult patients, and not their relatives, to choose their visitors. At the hospitals' request, the provision would not preempt existing visitation policies, particularly those related to a patient's medical condition or the comfort of other patients. An example would be limits on the number of visitors at one time.

The measure heads to the Senate floor Monday. At issue is a common hospital scenario in which visitors are denied access to patients because a relative declares them unwelcome -- for example, Englin said, a hospitalized elderly widower who has a new girlfriend his adult children don't like. Depending on a hospital's policy, those children might be able to prevent the girlfriend from visiting the patient despite his own wish to see her.

"There was a really horrible situation in Staunton where two women, best friends, both married, their husbands passed away -- they found themselves elderly and widowed and they decided to move in together," Englin said. "It was nothing romantic. They were just roommates. They wanted to live out their days together. One was hospitalized on her deathbed, and the other was not allowed to visit because she wasn't family."

That example is one reason why AARP Virginia supports Englin's bill. It's also why the hospitals do: Hospitals are glad for a state law that would extricate their nurses and administrators from sometimes unpleasant family feuds.

"This bill actually helps hospitals clarify visitation policy and gets them out of the middle of a very complicated family situation," said Katharine M. Webb, senior vice president of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association.

Although Englin emphasized that the bill carries a "broad purpose" that goes beyond gay rights, he said that granting protections to same-sex couples is, in his view, an added benefit. In fact, Englin said it was just such a scenario that inspired him to introduce the bill. Last year at a forum about the marriage amendment, Englin met Mike Rankin, a psychiatrist in Arlington County who was denied the right to visit his dying partner in a Seattle hospital because the man's ex-wife barred him from the facility.

"She had said a visit by me would be disruptive to his children and depressing to his children, so I was not allowed to visit," Rankin recalled. "All I knew was that I couldn't get in to see the man who had been the light of my life for six years."

Added Englin: "It's terrible and tragic that patients' wishes were not honored, and that caused a lot of pain.

"This bill is intended to correct that and make these tragedies not happen again."