Continental promo
||  Health News  ||
 
July 28, 2005

Groups oppose efforts to allow health care providers to discriminate against gays

Several key medical and community organizations are speaking out against friend-of-the-court papers filed in a court case in San Diego that say health care providers should be able to discriminate against patients on religious grounds, including discriminating against gays and lesbians. The case involves a San Diego lesbian who was denied in vitro fertilization services because the providers cited religious beliefs against gay men and women becoming parents. The California Medical Association and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations filed friend-of-the-court papers saying that health care providers should be allowed to discriminate.

But a board array of medical, gay rights, and community-based organizations this week filed an amicus brief with the court opposing any decision that would allow health care providers to legally discriminate against their patients.

“Medical ethics are clear that when a doctor is willing to perform a service for some patients, it’s ethically inappropriate to refuse that service to others in a discriminatory manner,” said Joel Ginsburg, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, one of the groups that signed the brief. “We think it’s important for the community to recognize that the positions of the CMA and the CMDA in this case do not reflect generally accepted principles of ethics in the practice of medicine.”

In addition to GLMA, the signers of the brief include the Anti-defamation League, the American Academy of HIV Medicine, the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care, the American Medical Student Association, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, Bienestar Human Services, the California Pan-ethnic Health Network, the California Women’s Law Center, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, the Mautner Project, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the National Health Law Program.

"The expertise and stature of these diverse organizations underscores how many patients are placed at risk by CMA and CMDA's approach to these issues," said Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel in Lambda Legal's Western regional office, who is representing the woman denied fertilization services.  “We vigorously defend everyone’s right to free exercise of religion, but there is an essential limit when religion becomes a force for harming others.”

In the lawsuit, Guadalupe Benitez charged that her doctors refused to inseminate her after she had received 11 months of preparatory treatment from the clinic. The doctors claimed that because of their personal religious beliefs about gay people, they would not administer the treatment and asserted that their fundamentalist Christian beliefs exempt them from California's civil rights laws.

Benitez's lawsuit was thrown out of state court initially, but she won an appeal two years ago that said patients can sue health care providers who discriminate against them based on their sexual orientation, and federal law does not exempt health care providers from state civil rights laws. Last fall Benitez won a legal ruling in the trial court saying that doctors in a for-profit medical group must comply with California's antidiscrimination laws and treat all patients equally, whatever the doctors' personal religious beliefs may be. The doctors asked the court of appeal in San Diego to review that ruling before trial, and the court ordered both sides to submit briefs. The parties' briefs can be found at www.lambdalegal.org.

Reader Comments

These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site. They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling. The viewpoints appearing here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of advocate.com, The Advocate, or its affiliates.

Be the first to comment on this story.

Back to top

Submit a comment for this story:

*Type your comment here (Required, 1000 characters max. HTML formatting and hyperlinks are NOT permitted.):

*Name (Required): 

*Hometown (Required): 

*E-mail address: (Required, but will not be displayed)

Is this comment for publication? 
Yes   No

Daytime phone number: (Required for print publication only and will not be displayed)

Please enter the words you see in the box, in order and separated by a space. Doing so helps prevent automated programs from abusing this service.

  

If you would like to submit a comment for posting, please fill out the form above. 

All comments submitted via this form are subject to posting or publication. (To send a private letter to an Advocate editor or writer, please use the e-mail button at the top of the page, or use snail mail.) If you would like your comment considered for publication in The Advocate magazine, please include your full name, your city of residence, and a phone number where you can be reached during business hours so that we can confirm your identity. Your e-mail address and telephone number are strictly confidential and will not be shared or used for any purpose other than to contact you about your comment.

See the Contact page for sending comments for reasons other than responding to Advocate editorial and news stories.

Please note that comments sent by fax or snail mail are unlikely to be posted, although they will be considered for publication along with all letters received via e-mail or via this Web page. Comments that chiefly concern Advocate.com content will be considered for posting only on the Web site. The Advocate reserves the right to edit submitted comments for grammar, spelling, obscenities, or libel; we will, however, do our best to preserve the original comment's style and intent. Comments considered for publication in The Advocate magazine may also be edited for length.

More Exclusives
  • View From the Hill: The End of DADT?
    Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed that lawyers are exploring ways to ease enforcement of the military's gay ban, but cautioned that the law doesn't leave much wiggle room. He need look no further than DOD history for a lesson in altering the policy.
  • Hot Sheet: Week of July 5
    When you get back from that big 4th of July barbecue, unwind with Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno and your favorite B-movie-mocking, basic cable robots.
  • Hungry Like the Wolf
    A master of viola, ukulele, piano, and harp, Patrick Wolf is a music prodigy -- one who, the night before this interview, spit on a cop and got himself arrested.
  • Soapside: Advocate's Guide to Daytime
    Forbes March talks about playing gay, Otalia fans outraged, update on One Life to Live’s Patricia Maurceri’s firing over gay plot point, Phillip Chancellor III big reveal, and Erica Kane goes to Africa.
  • The Faces of Federal Prop. 8
    With the federal challenge to Prop. 8 moving full speed ahead, Advocate.com sits down with the two couples named as plaintiffs in the suit.
  • Mommy, the Gays Are Coming
    After a year of advancements and celebration for gay and lesbian Colombians, the community takes to the streets of Bogota for the country's biggest pride ever.
  • The Pride of Antwerp
    Advocate.com hits the gay-friendly streets of Antwerp with openly gay police commissioner Serge Muyters.
  • Excerpt: Mean Little Deaf Queer
    In an excerpt from her humorous and harrowing new memoir, Mean Little Deaf Queer, Terry Galloway recalls her early childhood, describing feelings of ugliness, confusion about gender, and being one of the boys.
  • Top Political Blogs
    From Joe.My.God to The Daily Beast, Advocate.com spotlights a few of the best blogs that cover politics, inside and way outside the Beltway.
  • The Diva of French Television
    A hot young screenwriter who has made gay OK for millions of French viewers, Nicolas Mercier sips champagne, dons a feathered hat, and says he wants to see Colin Farrell and Jude Law go at it.