Last week, a gay man in Kansas City was forcibly removed from his partner’s hospital room after a confrontation with his partner’s family.
[According to the Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/gay-man-arrested-missouri-hospital_n_3060488.html), Roger Gorley and his partner, Allen Mansell, have been in a civil union for five years and also have legal permission to make medical decisions for one another, but the nurse on duty at the time disregarded that information.
“I was not recognized as being the husband,” Gorley said to Kansas City Fox station WDAF. “I wasn’t recognized as being the partner.”
According to the hospital, Gorley’s removal wasn’t a homophobic act. It was hospital policy. His argument with Mansell’s brother escalated to hospital security being called to remove him from the room. When Gorley refused, he was arrested.
What is problematic about this situation is not Gorley’s removal from the hospital, but rather the testimony from Gorley’s daughter, Amanda Brown, about how he was removed.
On her blog titled “We Are Atheism,” [Brown wrote that](http://www.weareatheism.com/arrested-at-hospital-just-for-wanting-to-hold-his-partners-hand/) police arrested her father with “brute and excessive force.” She says that they wrestled her father to the ground and one officer pushed a knee into his back while handcuffing him. The troubling part of Gorley’s arrest comes from this next statement.
“(The arresting officers) assumed because (Gorley) was a gay man that he was HIV positive,” Brown said in her blog. “When they drew blood from accosting him in such a brutal manner, they freaked out. One of the arresting officers was so offended by my father’s presence that he would not touch him with his bare hands. He wore gloves the entire time, and, to make matters even more humiliating, he didn’t want his handcuffs back.”
There are two major problems that need to be addressed with this incident, the first being the homophobic actions of the arresting officers that Brown described. The assumption that all gay men are HIV-positive is a cruel misrepresentation of the gay community, and has led to the FDA’s law banning all sexually active gay men from donating blood, which I discussed [in a column](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2013/4/15/blood-our-streets-fda-should-lift-ban-gays-giving-/) earlier this week.
Another misconception about HIV is that the majority of people who are infected are gay. [According to the National Institutes of Health](http://www.nia.nih.gov/health/publication/hiv-aids-and-older-people), almost one-fourth of HIV/AIDS-positive individuals in the United States are 50 years and older, due to older Americans’ lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and ways to prevent infection.
In addition to this discrimination, Gorley faced the very real problem of not being able to visit his partner in the hospital due to their sexual orientation. Before 2010, being able to see ailing loved ones in the hospital was almost impossible for same-sex couples. This is one of several benefits given to married heterosexual couples that are sometimes taken for granted.
As of 2010, hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments must give patients the choice to choose who can receive visitation rights and make medical decisions on their behalf. This change, created by President Obama, was meant to aid gay and lesbian couples.
Gorley was bailed out of jail three hours after his arrest but not without being given a $600 fine for disorderly conduct and trespassing. Gorley, Brown and company have since set up [a fund for donations](http://www.gofundme.com/2kofr8) to help raise money for legal fees and hospital costs.
