Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Laurel Hester vs Ocean County, New Jersey
Laurel Hester has spent her whole life trying to make the world a better place.Laurel Hester has spent her whole life trying to make the world a better place. That is why the events that have followed her diagnosis with terminal lung cancer a year ago have seemed so strange to her. She assumed a lifetime spent making the world a better place for others would entitle her to a measure of fairness in her time of desperate need.
Laurel Hester was wrong.
—It’s Laurel Hester’s Wonderful Life, by Michael Jensen at The BigGayPicture
So I guess today’s my day of public rants. I had stopped writing about things that bordered on or crossed into politics, because they often piss me off; and I wanted this site to be my happy place. But along with my previous rant on ”Medicaid/Medicare," I really just couldn’t avoid posting about this topic.
The Big Gay Picture is carrying a three part series on Laurel Hester. If you read GoogleNews, you may have briefly registered the small blip, about a former New Jersey investigator who was denied the right to leave her pension benefits to her partner. Trust me, if you blinked, you probably missed it, I know I didn’t register it the first time. It was just another, “lesbian seeks domestic partnership benefits” news item to me. That sounds cold, but when you see the items and articles enough, you get fairly desensitized to the issue. So Laurel Hester was relegated to the mass of semi-processed news bits, except for the Big Gay Picture, or more accurately, AfterEllen.
You see, I read AfterEllen almost daily. It’s my dose of lesbian and gay news. And since it primarily focuses on entertainment, it fits my mantra of relegating the world news, and other depressing things into the first half-hour of my morning, then moving on to more pleasant things— Technology and Entertainment news. But, AfterEllen had a link, simply titled, Laurel Hester. The name kind of rang a bell, but I couldn’t place where from so I clicked the link, and so should you.
The story in some ways is very simple—a 24 year, lesbian investigator for the county prosecutor’s office is being denied the right to leave her pension to her life partner. It happens time and again all over the country. But what makes this story more heinous then the next is the sheer cowardice and bigotry of the five member, “freeholders” of the county.
At the freeholders’ last public meeting, on Dec. 7th,, a crowd of over a hundred people arrived to question them about their decision. Among the crowd were ministers, decorated war veterans, and law enforcement officials. After twenty people spoke in favor of Laurel’s case (and none against), the freeholders chose not to respond. Instead, they literally ran out the back door rather than face any questions.
That’s right, these elected officials, snuck out the back door of a public meeting, rather than address an issue of public debate. Is that even legal?. OMG. Seriously, is that legal?
You have to read this article. It’s one of the few that Laurel Hester actually consented to be questioned and quoted for. Petition the freeholders of Ocean County. Write about it in your blog. Or just tell a friend. Do something. Laurel is certain to die; and her story is bad news, bad news. Her partner will get her life insurance, but only if she dies before the donated vacation time benefits her fellow co-workers gave her run out. Otherwise, her partner won’t get her life insurance or her pension.
I know my fair share of bad words, and trust me when I say, none of them are suitable enough for this situation. Here’s how to contact the Freeholders:
Ocean County Freeholders
P.O. Box 2191
101 Hooper Ave.
Toms River, NJ 08754-2191
Here are the freeholders phone numbers:
James F. Lacey: (732) 929-2004;
John P. Kelly: (732) 929-2003;
John C. Bartlett, Jr: (732) 929-2116;
Gerry P. Little: (732) 929-2001;
Joseph H. Vicari: (732) 929-2002
or you can email them at:
Note: Seems my last update changing Laurel’s position from police officer to investigator, maybe wrong. Investigator is the more neutral term, but it does seem that police officer is the correct term.
Footnotes
Laurel’s Legacy | http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/2005nov/2602.htm
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