This particular legislation is now known as Senate Bill 0938 (2005). After it was passed by the lower house of the Michigan legislature, the bill proceeded to the state senate. There it was referred to the Committee on Health Policy on 12/13/2005. That committee has several bills before it and they have
not yet issued a report on SB 938.
The committee will then return the bill to the Senate for a vote, possibly with amendments or recommendations. I am unsure if Michigan's senate is still dominated by Republicans. Michigan's politics can be volatile, especially as concerns health care. Support for the rights of gays is thin in this state, so I would think that the fate of this bill rests upon how it might affect the health care of str8 people there, and upon how vigorously the gay community in Michigan can make the claim that it would negatively affect the health care of str8 people.
"Are you telling me that a health care provider can deny me medical treatment because of my sexual orientation? I hope not," he said.
The bill, in omitting sexual orientation from it's list of prohibited discrimination does exactly that. It is an evil bill. That it should even have been proposed is shocking; that it actually passed the House is a nightmare. It does not speak well for the moral character of that place, but then I would never have argued strenuously that one could find many virtuous people in Michigan. I was born there. I went to school there. I left the state at my earliest opportunity. Had I remained, the legal penalty for my marriage to my husband would technically have been life imprisonment. While recent court decisions appear to have invalidated those laws, they remain on the books. I have not heard that there is significant support for repealing them officially. Michigan is not a nice place. Any gays with the misfortune to have been born there should move at once. Gays lucky enough to find themselves elsewhere are advised to avoid the place.
While looking for this information I came upon the claim that similar laws were being promoted in
15 other states.