Renjie Butalid

The case below, involving a gay elderly couple who were together for 20 years before they were forcibly kept apart by government officials when one of them fell down and was hospitalized, makes me really angry that I felt the need to speak up about it and be heard.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes. Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O’Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O’Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

If say for example, Monika and I had been living in the United States in the early part of the 20th century, based on our race (i.e. Filipino and German-Portuguese), our relationship would have been looked down upon and in some cases, we may have even been thrown in jail if we decided to get married.

Anti-miscegenetion laws, otherwise known as miscegenation laws, were laws that prohibited interracial marriage. From the 19th century into the 1950s, most US states enforced anti-miscegenation laws. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional, overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

Im happy that society has progressed to the point where interracial marriages are no longer an issue (generally speaking). In fact, in Canada, interracial marriages are on the rise especially as the number of visible minorities in Canada continues to climb where it is expected that an increasing number of them will marry outside their ethnic group. This comes as no surprise to me as I know a lot of mixed-race couples who have plans on getting married, having kids and raising a family even though they come from seemingly different backgrounds (in terms of race, culture, religion, etc).

It seems that Monika’s baby nephew, Nikolas aka “Tumbles“, is indicative of the emerging face of Canada/US (and perhaps other parts of the world), being of mixed Chinese-German-Portuguese heritage, but still 100% Canadian.

Back to the case at hand, it seems that society has not progressed far enough when two people who have spent a long time together, are forcibly kept apart by government strictly on the basis of their sexual orientation and with whom they choose to spend their life with. Everyone has the right to love and be happy with whomever they want, whether it is with a member of the opposite or the same sex.

I hope that Clay gets the justice that him and his partner Harold deserves, and that we finally recognize and place the same emphasis on gay relationships and unions just as we do with heterosexual relationships.