Some Justice For Clay Greene

I first wrote about Clay Greene and Harold Scull HERE.

Clay and Harold were a gay couple living together, relatively peacefully as you will soon learn, until Harold had an accident. Then Clay was not allowed to see Harold because they weren't a legal couple. And because they weren't a legal couple, in order to pay Harold's hospital bill, the county stepped in and sold all of Clay and Harold's things without permission.

They effectively stole from Clay.

And now Sonoma County has agreed to pay $600,000 to Clay Greene because county social workers kept him from seeing his dying partner in the hospital because he was gay.

Greene accused social workers of denying him hospital visitation rights to see Harold, despite signed wills, medical declarations and powers of attorney naming each other as spouses--the couple was not married nor registered as domestic partners.

The lawsuit also alleged that after Harold Scull passed away, social workers forced a distraught and grieving Clay Greene into a nursing home and sold the couple's property, including art and heirlooms.

The county's lawyer, Gregory Spaulding, of course denied the discrimination claims but did admit mistakes in selling the couple's property.

Mistakes.

Keeping a couple apart when one of them is dying is a mistake?
Forcing the surviving partner into a nursing home is a mistake?
Selling off everything the couple owned, without the permission of either man, is a mistake?

In the interests of fairness, social workers say they kept Clay Greene away from Harold Scull because of previous domestic violence allegations. According to a sheriff's report, Scull went to authorities with a black eye and said Greene threatened to kill him, though Scull was later unwilling to lodge a formal complaint.

Spaulding said, noting that the plaintiff removed the discrimination allegations from the lawsuit three weeks ago, "The county remains confident in its position that there was no discrimination in this case."

But what is most troubling is the idea of county employees swooping into a man's house and selling all of his belongings. Under the law, county officials are permitted to sell property worth $5,000 or less to cover medical expenses, but Clay Greene and Harold Scull's belongings earned more than $25,000 at auction.

Spaulding said errors in that case have led to revised policies at the Public Guardian's office, and that the county settled the case Thursday to avoid further expense: "It just made economic sense to stop the bleeding. To end the case and avoid all expenses and costs."

Or the embarrassment of what you did to Clay Greene, and to Harold Scull.

Funny, though, this might have never happened had gay marriage been legal.