Do we need to legalize same-sex death?

I came across a recent re-post of an older blog from the Death Reference Desk that I found incredibly disturbing and for none of the reasons you might expect when reading a blog about death. The post was talking about some of the legal issues surrounding same-sex marriage rights and their effect on funerary practices. I have always been a supporter of same-sex marriage. I think it is completely ridiculous to still be enforcing inequality in any way; its 2013 people, smarten up!

I have never before considered the legal implications of legislation prohibiting gay-marriage on funerary practices. Apparently in states or countries where gay-marriage is not legal, same-sex partners have no legal rights to the body of their deceased partner. The blog post told the story of a man, Ron, who had to fight with the state authorities and the office of the medical examiner to get the body of his partner of 17 years released to him for burial. It took Ron four weeks to finally get the body released to him even though his partner had specified in his will he wished his final rights to be undertaken by Ron. I find this story to be incredibly sad and shocking particularly in relation to what we have been learning about in class this week.

We have been learning about the complicated politics of death, particularly the repatriation of human remains. There are people around the world fighting to get the human remains of ancestors re-buried in order to respect the deceased’s beliefs and wishes about their funeral and burial rites. There has been a massive shift in archaeology and anthropology in the last few decades from a primacy of scientific inquiry above all else to a primacy of beliefs systems and traditions associated with human remains. While I definitely think this is a positive shift in the field, I find it a little disconcerting that the voices advocating for respecting the wishes of the long dead are louder than the voices advocating for respecting the wishes of the very recently dead. It makes me quite angry to think that someone who has just been torn apart by the loss of a loved one has to deal with the additional trauma of having to fight to lay their loved one to rest. I sincerely hope that more states and countries will soon legalize same-sex marriage and stop treating human beings as second-class citizens because of their sexual orientation.