Let There Be Love!

And there is also a video, it turns out:Much like Truman's desegregation of the military, the lifting of DADT will eventually change the entire country.

Years ago I had a T-shirt with the above headline written on it. The T-shirt was in support of a lesbian couple, Karen Thompson and Sharon Kowalski, the latter of whom was in an auto accident that left her with severe brain damage. Thompson, of course, was a dutiful partner and saw to the care of Sharon. Despite this, Karen's right-wing Christian parents attempted to deny Karen access to her partner. For the next eight years, Karen was unable to care for Sharon, as the case wound its way through the courts. In 1991, however, sanity prevailed and Karen won her case. Now, 28 years after the accident, the couple are still together, and Sharon is apparently talking (from an article in the July 2007 Windy City Times):

Eight years after the accident, she got to go home. Seven years after that, she can stand with a brace. Eight years after that and Sharon Kowalski, age 50, is starting to talk.

[. . .]

Under her father's care, Kowalski received virtually no visitors in the nursing home and, apparently, few check-ups. Without any direct care or contact, nobody noticed her toes gradually curled under her, for example. ( The problem was corrected through surgery. ) According to Thompson, the most surprising thing is that Kowalski never seemed to scar emotionally. Kowalski still has many physical scars, but she's standing in a walking brace, talking and cheating at cards. Today, 23 years after her accident, Kowalski seems to be doing the impossible. Thompson said that all she ever asked was for people to not 'put limits on a human being.'

Read the whole article. It's well worth the time.

It's also worth noting that Obama has been good on this issue. In April of 2010 he issued a directive barring hospitals from this kind of discrimination:

President Obama has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a rule that would prevent hospitals from denying visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners.

The president's Thursday memo said, "There are few moments in our lives that call for greater compassion and companionship than when a loved one is admitted to the hospital. ... Yet every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides."

Despite this rule, things like this keep happening:

A Tennessee hospital that denied a lesbian patient her legal rights of visitation by her same-​sex partner is the focus of outrage today, and being called upon explain. Rolling Hills Hospital in Franklin, Tennessee, “denied multiple requests by Val Burke to visit her partner, who is currently a patient in the hospital’s residential facility. Staff members excluded her from the room since she was not a legal spouse or family member,” according to a report today in Out & About

Still a long way to go, apparently. But the above video, and more images like it that are sure to follow, will eventually show the doubters that this was never an issue. Of course, this will have zero effect on the religious nutjobs, but there's no helping them anyway, is there?

UPDATE: ABL over at Balloon Juice draws an awseome analogy.