California doctors can't refuse treatment to gays on religio

[Will]

In another massive win against ignorant bigots, the California Supreme Court ruled that doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians in medical treatment, religious beliefs be damned.

California doctors can't refuse treatment to gays on religious grounds, court rules
Doctors may not discriminate against gays and lesbians in medical treatment, even if the procedures being sought conflict with physicians' religious beliefs, the California Supreme Court decided today.

In the second, major gay-rights victory this year, the state high court said religious physicians must obey a state law that bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

"The 1st Amendment's right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the . . . antidiscrimination requirements," Justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote for the court.

The decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Guadalupe T. Benitez, an Oceanside lesbian who lives with her partner and wanted to become pregnant with donated sperm.

Benitez contended that Dr. Christine Brody, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, told her that her religious views prevented her from performing an intrauterine insemination on a lesbian.

Another physician at the clinic, Dr. Douglas Fenton, later told Benitez that the staff was uncomfortable helping her conceive a child and advised her to find another doctor outside the medical group, Benitez said.

The doctors denied the allegations. Brody said she would not perform the procedure on any unmarried woman, heterosexual or homosexual.

Justice Marvin Baxter, in a separate concurring opinion, said doctors can avoid liability by referring patients who want procedures that conflict with their religion to other physicians in the practice.

"I am not so certain this balance of competing interest would produce the same result in the case of a sole practitioner," Baxter wrote. The court did not tackle that question.

A trial court ruled for Benitez, but an appeals court overturned that decision in favor of the doctors. After the case landed in the state high court, civil libertarian groups sided with Benitez and religious groups, including Jewish rabbis and Islamic clergy, argued that doctors were entitled to disavow treatments that conflicted with their religion.

Benitez, 36, and now the mother of three, said she has been pursuing her case for 10 years.

"This isn't just a win for me personally and for other lesbian women," she said. "It's a win for everyone, because anyone could be the next target if doctors are allowed to pick and choose their patients based on religious views about other groups of people."

Robert Tyler, general counsel for Advocates for Faith and Freedom, said the decision might be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said the ruling would spur voters "to recognize the radical agenda of our opposition" and support a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage in California. The state Supreme Court ruled in May to allow such unions.

Kenneth R. Pedroza, who represented the doctors, predicted that many doctors would simply refuse to do the insemination procedure at all. Pedroza said Brody did not violate state law because it did not bar discrimination on the basis of marital status when the 1999 incident occurred. The law has since been amended.

Asked whether Brody would have done the procedure on a married lesbian couple, Pedroza said: "I don't know."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 8017.story

[Jolly Sapper]

This always seemed silly to me.  If you're a doctor, your job is to use what you know to keep people alive, diagnose illness and disease, or some other doctor-ly thing.  Why would somebody willingly volunteer to do a job that will have them doing something that they might not agree with on religious grounds?  Shit, WHY would anybody take a doctor (or anybody else for that matter) seriously after that kinda BS statement?

Their argument makes about as much sense as a pacifist volunteering for the Army, going to sniper school, and then complaining about having to kill people.  

If there were any justice in the world, brain cells would spontaneously commit suicide in numbers positively corresponding to the level of hypocrisy they just allowed to happen.  With something this seriously stupid resulting in something like this....

[spoiler:2noxic1p][youtube:2noxic1p]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-03vYYAjA[/youtube:2noxic1p][/spoiler:2noxic1p]

[Asmodean]

I, for my part, would not want to be treated by a fundie doctor. And given half a choice, I would not want to be treated by any denomination of theist doctor at all.

[Faithless]

I was thrilled when I heard that story.  Go judges!  Every now and then I hear something like that and think maybe there is hope for humanity after all.

Now it's time to work on those fundie pharmacists!

[Asmodean]

Every now and then I hear something like that and think maybe there is hope for humanity after all.

Oh, there is hope for humanity. The question is, is there hope for the United States?