Religious Bigot to Straight Parents: Ask Hospitals to Keep LGBT Staff Away From Your Children

Rightwing lunabigot Linda Harvey of Mission America is advising parents to "communicate" to hospitals that they do not want "open homosexuals"—a.k.a. members of a hospital's LGBT employee organization—to care for their children lest the gay rub off:

Do you think these folks provide good role modeling at a time when your child is very vulnerable? [Let’s] say your eleven year-old has broken her leg rather badly and needs to be in the hospital a few days, which would you prefer: a nurse who’s proud of her lesbianism, who has rainbow identifiers on her work clothing, or a nurse who does not? I would like to suggest that parents think long and hard about this. If you want your children to admire people who proclaim a homosexual lifestyle, they’re involvement with your child during a hospital stay is sure to be an influence. And let me be clear that folks involved in these behaviors can be certainly competent workers but they are tacking on to their workplace identity one that is highly offensive to many people and can be erroneously influential to children who won’t, or shouldn’t, see the whole picture of how this behavior really manifests itself.

Harvey suggests that parents write "a letter that you file with your pediatrician that should your child ever be hospitalized, you do not want your child to be treated or cared for" by a gay. But first a parent needs to "select [a] pediatrician very carefully," Harvey warns, because secretly gay pediatricians might ignore your advance hate directive... or they might whistle show tunes during office hours or invite your kids to brunch or something else that's gay and terrible!

Harvey notes that straight parents should clearly communicate that it's okay for gay and lesbian doctors and nurses to treat their children in "emergency situations," which can be seen as either tremendously gracious on Harvey's part—"Well, okay, that lesbian nurse can save my daughter's life"—or as the kind of wishy-washy moral relativism that is destroying the moral fabric of this great nation.