If say...you were unmarried and your girlfriend got sick...and you wanted to visit her at the hospital...
How would you feel if you were arrested for caring about your partner?
THIS is why we need gay marriage.
How would you feel if you were arrested for caring about your partner?
THIS is why we need gay marriage.
LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. — A Lee’s Summit man is angry that hospital personnel ordered him off hospital property and police arrested him after he refused to leave the bedside of his sick partner.
Roger Gorley went to visit his partner, Allen, at Research Medical Center, 2316 E. Meyer Blvd., Tuesday afternoon. He says when he got there, a member of Allen’s family asked him to leave.
When Gorley refused, he says hospital security forcibly removed him from the property and put him in handcuffs. “I was not recognized as being the husband, I wasn’t recognized as being the partner,” Gorley said. While not legally recognized as a couple in Missouri, Gorley says he and his partner Allen have been in a civil union for nearly five years, and make medical decisions for each other.
He says the nurse refused to verify they also share joint Power of Attorney. “She didn’t even bother to go look it up to check into it,” Gorley said. “He’s been at the psychiatric unit part several times.”
According to an arrest report from Kansas City, Mo., police, a security supervisor at Research Medical Center was contacted by Emergency Room personnel after Gorley refused to leave the room of his partner. The hospital said they did not want to have any visitors to Allen’s room. Gorley was told to leave the room by nurses and security, but refused, the police report said.
“After several verbal attempts to get [Gorley] to leave the room, he continually refused and began to cause a disturbance,” the report said. “[He] began to cause a disturbance by physically resisting security officers as they escorted him out of the patient’s room.”
Arrest documents say Gorley was placed into handcuffs after a short struggle with hospital security. When police arrived, hospital security officials said they wanted to arrest Gorley for trespassing and disorderly conduct. He was then taken to the police station to be booked, documents show.
