Dear CNN

Yesterday I noticed that you had up on your website a poll asking Americans if they agreed or disagreed with President Obama’s order to allow gays and lesbians hospital visitation rights.  I am a gay man.  I have been partnered with the same man for almost 13 years.  For the record, that’s longer than all but one of Larry King’s marriages.  I’ve yet to hear a poll which asks whether his current wife should be allowed near him before or after any one of his surgeries.

I found your poll to be disturbing and disgusting.

It is polls such as this that perpetuate the notion that a public debate of our civil rights is perfectly acceptable.  It is polls such as this that perpetuate the notion that gays and lesbians are somehow different; that our relationships are different, less than, the relationships of heterosexual couples.  It does that by taking seriously the opinion that we should not be allowed to visit our partners in the hospital and be with them during stressful, scary and often life threatening situations.  It perpetuates the notion that those who feel that we should be treated as second class citizens have just another, valid, point of view.

Certainly you would never have a poll which asks Americans their opinion regarding whether or not we should have a black president.  There are surely people out there that think we should not.  Yet, for very good reasons, you don’t find their opinions valid enough to invest your time and interest in.  Is it because you fear the backlash?  Or because you know the question to be morally repugnant?  Not all opinions are equal.  Some are based on ignorance and fear.  Yet for some reason, when it comes to the LGBT community, that ignorance and fear are acceptable points of view.

You may hide behind the idea that this is the news of the day and that you are just finding out where the country stands on the issues.  But that is disingenuous at best.  You were trying to drive up the traffic to your site using a hot button topic.  You call yourself a news organization, but then proceed to traffic in the incendiary emotions of prejudice.  You could be a leader on this issue.  You could choose not to honor opinions that have no scientific base.  Instead you choose to follow.  In doing so you give credibility to those who believe that should my partner or I wind up in a hospital, we deserve to go through that trauma, and possible death, alone.  You give credibility to the idea that when two people could and should comfort one another, they should both be made to suffer.  Alone.

That, to me, is despicable.

Sincerely, Ian

Posted on Apr 18, 2010 by Ian In: Current Events/Pop Culture/Politics, Write the Power
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