Gay Nurses... help!

[quakerkid]

Hi - Wondering if any gay nurses have an insight into some concerns i've been having...

How much do you self-disclose about yourself? What do you say when patients assume you are straight, and ask you about your girlfriend/wife? How about when they assume you are gay?!? How appropriate is it to be out to them? to your co-workers? Certainly there is a double standard, as straight nurses would be 'out' at work (by talking about thier family, or feeling comfortable self-disclosing about their family), but what techniques do you use at work?

Oh, and if you respond - please mention a little about what kind of nursing you do.

Thanks so much!

EDIT: Thanks for the first several responses - I wanted to update my question a little. I guess I am asking specifically about the situation when patients ask about your personal life (which, during nursing school, we were taught not to disclose, since the focus should be on the pt. not on the nurse.) But at the same time, we have to build a healty, healing relationship... answers?

[heron, ASN, RN]

OOPS ... never did address the OP's original question ... if he's still reading.

My situation is a little complicated by the fact that my late partner was a transgendered butch woman ... I referred to her by both male and female pronouns (wasn't on purpose, it just came out that way). So I usually come out to co-workers pretty early on just to avoid the kind of hard feelings that happen when people feel they've been lied to.

With patients, I just don't go there unless they are known to be "family" and might feel safer knowing that there are other gay folk looking out for them.

My patients are there to get their needs met, not to discuss my politics.

[EmergencyDpt]

There are ways to validate our unions that don't need to include antagonizing the religious sentiments of a large segment of the population. What is it that gay marriage proves aside from making a point?

Making a point? Have you no idea that without the ability to engage in a civil marriage with our partners, we are denied the right of survivorship. When your partner dies, your house, your pets, your posessions go to your partner's closest reletive and guess what...it aint you!

Lets use the words "civil marriage" because that is what has been taken away from us, the ability to engage in a civil marriage; a marriage recognized by civil authority, ie. the US government.

Without the ability to engage in civil marriage, we can't put our spouse under our healthcare plan with the same pretax money that a wife would be paid from. Trust me on this. I got a letter from HCA corporate headquarters and they told me that since same sex partners are not spouses, they are just like adding your next door nieghbor to your policy and it comes post tax, not pre tax and that's about a 33% mark up. Why do I have to pay that?

Without the ability to engage in civil marriage we cannot adopt our spouses children like a straight couple can to get healthcare and other benifits.

Without the ability to engage in civil marriage, there is no clear path for joint home ownership, joint stock purchasing, and other cooperative profit based ventures that are automatically assumed of the new narrowed marriage laws.

Without the ability to engage in civil marriage, we cannot sue an expartner for child support or alimoniy.

There are just tons and tons of ways that without marriage, our relationships are second class.

The poster that thinks that marriage is to bring children in the world is wrong, it's to make the partner part of your estate. The children of that marriage also will be part of your estate for sure and gay people can have just as many children as straight people. And it's just a short walk from your line of logic to make all marriages by senior citizens or other people who cannot bear children null and void.

Civil marriage has nothing to do with sexuality, it's all about rights. Gay people want the same rights as everyone else. There is no desire to make churches perform matramony ceramonies for anyone any more than a jewish person can sue a catholic church to perform a ceremony from their faith.

The snake handling and candle waving mumbo jumbo of religious rites have nothing to do with what gay people want. We want rights, the same rights as everyone else. We want the right to have the work we've done with our partners in raising children, amassing property, and participating in the tax system be recognized by civil authority.

If you want to dip your head in water and paint your bottom blue, go ahead, but don't put your religious gloves on my rights.

The sooner people start getting on with history and put down the fetters of the past, the sooner we can deal with the problems facing our generation. The world is not flat, the sun does not orbit the earth. Religion is not magic. Prayer does not affect the outcome of anything except your perception of it. So keep the state separated from all that or you will have traffic lights working on prayer power and taxes based on your church attendance.

As humans, we only have eachother. Look at sharia law in muslum lands and you see that religion can cause good people to do bad things all in the name of god. A woman gets raped, she will be stoned to death for it! A woman gets caught driving, she looses a hand. A women gets caught without her head blanket, she gets lashed. Religious law is religious law and it should never be mixed up with civil law.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep the religious hysteria from infecting the cool logic of government for the betterment of mankind.

[yoginurse2b]

Well said EmergencyDpt! Thanks for sharing the previous picture. And your dog is sooooo cute!

Although I am not a Muslim, but I came from a Muslim country, where being gay is punishable up to 10 years in prison. Yes we should stop mixing religion with civil rights. It's totally wrong. What if a person is atheist like me? Do I have to follow the rules of other religions to decide how I should live my life? That is so ****** up.

[EmergencyDpt]

Yoginurse2b,

Thank you for your post. As athiests we are doubly damned (pun intended) by a society that would rather look back toward the hunter/gatherer, every man for himself, magical thinking mindset. I'm always dissapointed that nurses who use technology in every aspect of their lives aren't more agnostic (at least).

It's a simple experiment to take heart attack victims and pray over one and give the other integrillin and see what happens. No sane nurse or medical professional would question that prayer is not a viable treatment for disease. Yet if you ask them whether it's ok for gays to marry, they drag out a tome that is THOUSANDS of years old to look up the answer! That the ancient King James is the last person to have it rewritten, when my nursing textbooks weren't good from one term to the next due to rewrites is proof that the information is outdated and useless.

I didn't mean for this to be an attack on religion but it has already been brought to the fore by other posters. Religion is the primary mover against equal rights for gays, and women as well.

If that's what it takes to get you to bed at night, go ahead and get down on your knees. However to make rules for modern times based on heiroglyphics scratched in the dirt is a recipie for disaster. I repeat, keep your religious gloves off my rights.

[Miwila]

It is a mystery to me how any nurse or healthcare provider who has witnessed the supernatural dying experience some patients have can persist in their atheism.

That aside certain religious groups hold it as part of their faiths that being gay is wrong. So if you're gay and don't like it don't go to their churches. Because we live in a democracy and not a theocracy there is room for debate. There is also room for religious tolerance, and to bash people for their religious views just because those views don't support a certain lifestyle you might partake in is intolerant and un-american.

[Atheos]

It is a mystery to me how any nurse or healthcare provider who has witnessed the supernatural dying experience some patients have can persist in their atheism.

In point of fact, NO nurse has witnessed ANYTHING supernatural. You only think you have felt or sensed something supernatural. I mean seriously. I don't see how people study science and still persist in superstitious beliefs. But that is just me...

That aside certain religious groups hold it as part of their faiths that being gay is wrong. So if you're gay and don't like it don't go to their churches.

That's just asinine. Many people in the south don't like blacks. Does that mean I shouldn't live in the South???

Because we live in a democracy and not a theocracy there is room for debate.

We don't live in a democracy. We don't even live in a constitutional democracy. Those are misnomers. We live in a REPUBLIC.

The main difference is that democracies are ruled by majority and Republics are ruled by law. Our law is the Constitution which states that all men (and women) are created EQUAL.

That means your silly religion is your right to practice and believe and homosexuals CAN get married. The reason courts keep getting involved is because it is their job and duty to.

If we left everything up to the majority I would still be in the fields picking cotton and all you women would still be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

There is also room for religious tolerance, and to bash people for their religious views just because those views don't support a certain lifestyle you might partake in is intolerant and un-american.

Criticizing a religious view is not bashing it.

Also, why is it ok for those religious people to bash or consider homosexuals sinners but it's not ok to bash or consider those religious people fools?

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

If religions demand tolerance then they need to be tolerant of others as well.

[heron, ASN, RN]

It is a mystery to me how any nurse or healthcare provider who has witnessed the supernatural dying experience some patients have can persist in their atheism.

That aside certain religious groups hold it as part of their faiths that being gay is wrong. So if you're gay and don't like it don't go to their churches. Because we live in a democracy and not a theocracy there is room for debate. There is also room for religious tolerance, and to bash people for their religious views just because those views don't support a certain lifestyle you might partake in is intolerant and un-american.[/quote

Nobody wants anyone to change their faith ... or go to their churches for that matter ... with the possible exception of those gay folk who were raised in a particular tradition who want to stay with it after coming out.

What I find intolerant and unAmerican is the insistence that the religious tenets of a few religious sects (and not all those opposing gay marriage are Christian) should be used to deny me equal protection under the law that is guaranteed by the Constitution. The legal limitations of "civil union" laws have been enumerated above, I don't have to rewrite them.

It's got NOTHING to do with going to a particular church ... I don't WANT to go to a church that condemns me to hell for who I am. I have my own spiritual path, thank you very much ... don't need yours.

The argument about atheism vs theism is unwinnable ... let's agree to disagree on that one.

Although I can empathize with the frustration of atheists who get tired of theist arguments regarding civil matters.

I say again, it's all about equal protection and the separation of church and state.

[EmergencyDpt]

I'm not one to pile on but if you have had a supernatural experience then it was totally your own. If I had one I'd look into my mirror and see what about me led me to a conclusion not supported by other witnesses or by reproducable and robust experimentation.

There are well plenty of very well documented studies that show that other than the obvious quietus, there is no change in state from life to death of the corpus. No fan fare, no flashing lights, no spirit blinking its way to the ceiling, no change in weight or size, just death.

Back to my rights as a citizen of the United States and more importantly, the perpetrators of social injustic that would put me to the back of the bus. In the workplace, my homosexuality only shows as much as your heterosexuality.

I heard a radio comentator this morning say that , 'gay is the new black'.

[Atheos]

I like that. 'Gay is the new black.'

[flightnurse2b, LPN]

Also, why is it ok for those religious people to bash or consider homosexuals sinners but it's not ok to bash or consider those religious people fools?

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

If religions demand tolerance then they need to be tolerant of others as well.

sorry for crashing the male nurse's forum, just wanted to :bow: to stanley. well said, as always.

[just_cause, BSN, RN]

I wonder why this is in the MALE forum and not in the political or current issues forum....

[Atheos]

I was wondering that too actually.