Raulken co.UK - Doctors can't use bias to deny gays treatment

(08-18) 12:53 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- California doctors who have religious objections to gays and lesbians must nevertheless treat them the same as any other patient or find a colleague in the office who will do so, the state Supreme Court ruled...

SAN FRANCISCO - Doctors cannot discriminate against gays and lesbians in medical treatment, even if the procedures being sought conflict with physicians' religious beliefs, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously yesterday.In the second gay-rights victory this year, the state Supreme Court said religious physicians must obey a state law that bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation."The First Amendment's right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the . . . antidiscrimination requirements," Justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote for the court.The decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Guadalupe T. Benitez, a lesbian who lives with her partner in Oceanside, a coastal city 35 miles north of San Diego, and wanted to become pregnant with donated sperm.Benitez contended that Dr. Christine Brody, an obstetrician at the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group, told her that her religious views prevented her from performing an intrauterine insemination on a lesbian.Another physician at the clinic, Dr. Douglas Fenton, told Benitez that the staff was uncomfortable helping her conceive a child and advised her to find a doctor outside the medical group, Benitez said.The doctors denied the allegations. Brody said she would not perform the procedure on any unmarried woman, heterosexual or homosexual.Justice...
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