Let's say you're married & your husband collapses

Follow me through this Monday hypothetical... You've been married for 17 years, and you're in Florida to take a cruise with your husband and children. Your husband is 39 years old and healthy as a horse, but suddenly he collapses, and you and the children are off to the hospital for a terrifying day.

Here's the tragedy: Your husband dies of a brain aneurysm that no one knew he had.

Here's the horror: The hospital refuses to let you into the room with your husband for eight hours. Let me say that again... for EIGHT HOURS, you can't hold his hand, you can't tell him you love him, you can't talk to the doctors, you can't stand by his side, you can't do anything except protest in the lobby. All because you aren't legally married in the eyes of this hospital and this state.

Here's another terrifying reality: You even have a medical power of attorney, but the hospital and it's staff still won't let you see your husband until a priest is performing last rites.

This happened to Janice Langbehn and her children. She was kept from seeing the love of her life, Lisa Marie Pond, as Lisa was dying. Janice was kept from her love's side for no other reason than the fact that the hospital, the state of Florida and some decidedly cruel individuals didn't like the idea of two women loving each other.

This didn't happen 50 years ago. It happened in February 2007.

This didn't happen in a tiny town and a tiny hospital in Kansas. It happened at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Fl.

And antigay activists claim that all same-sex couples need to protect their families are a few contracts like a medical power of attorney. Yup, that certainly worked here.

And antigay activists claim that banning marriage equality doesn't hurt a soul. Yup. No wounds here. No darn-near dying alone as your spouse clamored to be let in. No children crying in a waiting room. There's nothing to see here. Step away from the tears, and the blood and the emotional wounds that may never heal.

Today's Must Read: Who's really hurt by banning gays from adopting children

Hint: It isn't queers who suffer the most. Fred Grimm at the Miami Herald explains.

The on-going post mortems

[updated with new links]

As the aftermath of the LGBT community's election defeats continues, some interesting post mortem examinations defeats have begun to appear. Here are a few.

The Advocate has weighed in with the "Anatomy of a Failed Campaign."

Queerty isn't pleased.

Latrice Johnson of the group United Lesbians of African Heritage gave a fascinating and slightly disturbing interview to Two Down, 48 to Go.

Lorri Jean, one of the leaders of No on Prop 8, has posted a detailed FAQ on the campaign that everyone should read.

365.com writes about "Prop 8: What Went Wrong."

Leaders of the campaigns in California, Arizona and Florida liveblog at The Bilerico Project.

Painfully bittersweet

Last night I cheered Barack Obama's historic victory and toasted him with champagne. This morning I'm overwhelmed by pain.

Voters in Arizona and Florida banned marriage equality. Voters in Arkansas denied lesbians, gays and single heterosexuals the right to foster children and adopt. And most horrific of all, it looks like voters in California are taking the right to marry away from lesbian and gay couples.

To put this into perspective...

* If the Arkansas ban had been the law in Kansas when my life partner died of cancer, I would never have been able to adopt the son I had raised. Because she was his biological parent and I was invisible under the law, he would have lost both parents because of the death of one.

* Nearly 20,000 same-sex couples in California no longer know whether their marriages are legal. And the children of all same-sex couples throughout this nation woke up this morning to once again learn that their families are reviled.

One More Thing: My family & today's election

This morning three generations of my lily white family, ranging in age from 22 to 81, voted for a black man for president. And we did it in Kansas, even though we knew that Barack Obama doesn't have a chance in holy heck of taking our state's electoral votes. We did it because it was the right thing to do. We did it because we think Obama is the right person for the job.

It wasn't until after I cast my vote that I realized how emotional I feel about finally having the opportunity to vote for an African American for president. It makes me want to cry to see this country live up to its promise. I can only pray that the people of California, Florida, Arizona and Arkansas will continue to support that promise by turning their backs on discrimination.

Court declares Florida gay adoption ban to be unconstitutional

Circuit Judge David J. Audlin Jr. says the ban hurts children and violates both the state and federal constitutions, The Miami Herald reports.

A proposal that would ban same-sex couples from fostering or adopting children in Arkansas is on the ballot in November.

Counting all the votes in Sarasota County, Florida

By Nancy Jane Moore

It appears that the missing votes in the Sarasota County, Florida, congressional race would have favored the Democrat, Christine Jennings.

An analysis by the Orlando Sentinel of the 17,846 county ballots that lacked a vote in the congressional race indicated that those voters preferred Democrats by a significant percentage in five major statewide races.

Those 17,846 voters represented 15 percent of the total turnout. The votes were cast on a touch-screen machine that does not generate a paper trail. On absentee ballots -- which were cast on paper -- only 2.5 percent of the voters skipped the congressional race. The percentage of touch-screen ballots in Sarasota County with no vote in the race for Congress is six times that of the no vote in the other four counties included in this particular congressional district.

In the governor's race, those whose congressional votes weren't counted favored the Democrat by 6.7 percent. In the Senate race, they voted against Katherine Harris (their current Congresswoman) by a whopping 33 percent. See the Sentinel's graphic presentation here.

Jennings carried Sarasota County despite the no votes, but didn't do as well in the rest of the district. The election has just been certified for the Republican, who won by 369 votes.

As the Sentinel observes:

The analysis does not -- and cannot -- reveal why no congressional choice was recorded on the ballots. It also cannot determine which candidate any single voter might have selected had he or she made a choice.

But the strong performance of other Democrats indicates Jennings would have found a sizable number of supporters within the group.

The Sentinel showed their findings to two political experts and quoted them in their story:

"Wow," University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said. "That's very suggestive -- I'd even say strongly suggestive -- that if there had been votes recorded, she [Jennings] would have won that House seat."

David Dill, an electronic-voting expert at Stanford University, put it this way: "It seems to establish with certainty that more Democrats are represented in those undervoted ballots."

Jennings has filed suit and four advocacy groups are challenging the election as well: the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, Voter Action and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF has a press release and a copy of the complaint (PDF).

Since it seems very unlikely that such a large percentage of people didn't vote in this particular race, the question is why the votes weren't registered. One obvious possibility is a glitch -- or a hack -- in the programming of the machines themselves.

In a Nov. 26 editorial entitled "Deja Vu in Florida," The New York Times, noting that "if there was a computer glitch it probably changed the outcome of the race," said:

The campaign wants its experts to review the machines' secret computer source code, the programming that runs the computer inside the machine, to look for problems. Election Systems and Software, the company that made the machines, is not saying whether it will allow this. If it resists, the courts should order the company to hand over the code -- a requirement that should, in fact, be routine in all places where electronic voting machines are used.

The Times went on to say that "electronic voting without the full array of protections, including a voter-verified paper trail, is unacceptable."

If a flaw is found in the machines, the only fair solution is a new election. But that will certainly be fought tooth and nail by the Republicans.

According to the Sentinel, a Florida Republican spokeswoman said of the suit:

Christine Jennings is once again allowing her own personal ambitions and the radical political agendas of liberal third-party groups to hijack the democratic process.

I guess having all the votes actually counted is a "radical political agenda" only important to liberals.

Thanks to Jamie Lynk of Sarasota, who alerted In This Moment to the recent developments.