Tim Pawlenty and the Rights of Dying Gay People

Tim Pawlenty is the conservative Governor of Minnesota, who is ramping up for a 2012 campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination. Witness his travel schedule (hello Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina), and his efforts to woo anti-gay voters with interviews like this, where he calls transgender people a threat to third graders and apologizes for once supporting an anti-discrimination measure aimed at protecting LGBT people from being fired from their jobs.

Suffice it to say, it seems like the last thing Gov. Pawlenty wants to deal with before leaving the Minnesota Governor's office is gay rights legislation. Yet that's what he's likely to face in the coming weeks, as the Minnesota legislature moves forward with a bill that will allow same-sex couples the right to make end-of-life decisions, and also file wrongful death suits.

It sounds like a basic human right, huh? Couples who've been together for years, if not decades, being allowed to plan the end of their lives together, or being allowed recourse to a court of law if something particularly tragic happens that kills one of the partners. Yet in Minnesota, these are but two of the 515 rights that same-sex couples currently do not have because the state bans gay marriage.

This week, the Minnesota House of Representatives overwhelming passed a bill that will give gay couples power over end-of-line decisions, as well as access to wrongful death litigation. Now the question is whether Gov. Pawlenty will be willing to support it. Yes, it sounds like simple human rights, but it would also mark the first time that Minnesota law would recognize same-sex couples as legitimate, something anti-gay voters are likely to hold over Pawlenty as the 2012 primary comes creeping along. Is Tim Pawlenty willing to get in the middle of end-of-life decisions for gay couples?

Send his office a message right now urging him to get behind this legislation. End-of-life decisions are best left to the people most intimately involved; and everyone should have the right to die in accordance with their wishes.

Upon passage of the law in the Minnesota House yesterday, Rep. Erin Murphy, a legislator from St. Paul, said that this was a small step forward for equality.

"This legislation eliminates two of the 515 Minnesota laws that discriminate against committed couples," Rep. Murphy said. A small step, but one that could slowly but surely start to crumble the wall of discrimination that same-sex couples face in the land of 10,000 lakes.

The law, which was passed 78-55, now goes to the Minnesota State Senate, which passed a similar law last year and now must do a few procedural things to send the law to Gov. Pawlenty's desk. It's expected that the Senate will easily move the law forward.

In some respects, Gov. Pawlenty will face a decision much like Rhode Island's Governor, Don Carcieri, faced last year surrounding the rights of gay and lesbian couples being able to plan the funerals of their deceased partners. Gov. Carcieri, astonishingly, vetoed the law, worried that giving gay people the right to plan end-of-life decisions with their partners would lead us down the slippery slope toward same-sex marriage. It was a particularly ruthless move from a governor who when he's not presiding over Rhode Island, is best buddies with homophobic organizations like the National Organization for Marriage.

The fallout over Gov. Carcieri's move was huge. He received widespread condemnation from straight and gay (and liberal and conservative) politicians and voters, and eventually the Rhode Island state legislature voted to override his veto.

Perhaps Gov. Pawlenty can learn from the tactlessness of Gov. Carcieri, and not make a political spectacle out of the right of people to plan the end of their lives with their partners. This isn't gay marriage; this is about affording a small measure of dignity to two people near the end of their lives.

Urge Gov. Pawlenty to get behind this legislation today.

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