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By STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Thursday, May 15, 2008
NEW YORK (AP) — Just more than half of 88 hospitals got top marks under a new rating system created by two national gay-rights organizations, which hope the standards will result in more compassionate treatment of gay and lesbian patients. Policies addressed in the ratings include patient nondiscrimination, visitation and decision-making rights for partners, diversity training for staff and nondiscriminatory employment practices. The hospitals participated voluntarily, and the groups behind the report said there will be no effort to rate hospitals that don't want to respond. Instead, they hope many hospitals will strive for high ratings as the survey recurs annually. Called the Healthcare Equality Index, the ratings were designed by Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. Some responses to the new survey came from hospital networks. Kaiser Permanente, answering on behalf of 31 hospitals in California and Hawaii, said all met the survey's 10 criteria. They were among 45 hospitals in all with top marks. University Hospitals of Cleveland, representing 10 Ohio hospitals, said they fully met only two criteria — domestic partner benefits for employees and a patient nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A lawyer for a lesbian married in Massachusetts has asked Rhode Island's Superior Court for a divorce after an earlier attempt to dissolve the marriage failed. An attorney for Margaret Chambers asked the Superior Court Tuesday to dissolve his client's marriage after Rhode Island's top court blocked a divorce court from handling it. The judge did not immediately rule and scheduled another hearing for June 12. Chambers wed Cassandra Ormiston four years ago in Massachusetts, the only state where gay marriage is legal. Rhode Island does not recognize same-sex unions. In 2006, they filed for divorce in Rhode Island, where they live. Rhode Island's Supreme Court ruled in December that the state's divorce court cannot end the marriages of same-sex couples.
HAVANA (AFP) — President Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, is organizing Cuba's second anti-homophobia festival this week to boost public awareness of the country's long-marginalized gay community--and signaling a shift in politics, her father's government has approved the festival.
The week-long anti-homophobia festival, in Havana and six of Cuba's 14 provinces, aims to increase public awareness about gay rights through television programs, movies, theater, debates and book fairs, culminating with the International Day Against Homophobia, on May 17.
A teacher and mother of three children, Mariela Castro, 46, runs the Cuban Womens' Federation (FMC) as well as the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX). Her uncle Fidel Castro, 81, relinquished presidential power to his brother Raul, 76, in February citing health reasons.
Besides the educational efforts, Mariela's group is also busy reforming Cuba's Family Code and has proposed in parliament a bill on “freedom of gender”--the right to choose one's gender. Sex-change is a controversial issue in Cuba, after the country's first operation in 1988 raised such an outcry that the procedure was put on indefinite hold. But Mariela claims she is working with a team of surgeons from Belgium to restart operations in Cuba, and 30 procedures have already been approved by health authorities.
A GAY asylum seeker who faces torture and death if he is deported to Syria, where homosexuality is illegal, is waiting to hear if this week's appeal for leave to stay in Scotland will be granted.
Jojo Jako Yakob, 19, fled Syria two years ago after being arrested, shot and beaten before being tortured in jail when he was caught distributing anti-government leaflets.
Once prison guards discovered that he was not only a Christian member of the repressed Kurdish minority in the Arab state, but was also a homosexual, he was beaten so badly that he slipped into a coma.
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