For some reason, even the most dogged opponents of LGBT rights relent when it comes to end of life issues, with one obvious exception. When it comes to end of life rights, the Relationships (Statutory References) Act and ancillary legislation took care of outstanding LGBT issues like next of kin status when it comes to medical decisions for incapacitated partners, and inheritance and in-estate property rights and widows pensions after the death of one's civil union partner. The Christian Right drew back from opposition to this issue, fearing that it would be seen as too extreme. Unlike family policy issues, end of life issues aren't too contested. It may be because transition from life to death often occurs due to degenerative disease or accidental causes, and there is due sense of the solemnity, stress and rites and ceremonies attendant on the occasion. Granted, there's one exception to this general rule, which is the repulsive Topekan Phelpses, dedicated to disruption of the solemnity and privacy of both LGBT and military funeral services through raucous and inappropriate protests. Even social conservatives have gotten fed up with the Phelpses, and both federal and state Republicans have banned protests at funerals, sometimes military, sometimes otherwise. Even they are seen as extremists within the fundamentalist community, however. Granted too, there is one exception to this general rule, and that is the continuing prohibition of physician assisted suicide. Despite frequent questions about why it is that conservative Christians don't seem willing to press for an expanded budget for palliative pharmaceutical care that would practically deal with the medical needs of PLWAs and lesbian breast cancer survivors, there is a stupified silence from this direction. Ironically enough, new protease inhibitor access has lengthened the lifespans of PLWAs and reduced any interest in voluntary euthanasia or physician assisted suicide from that quarter. In terms of mortality itself, things are straightforward. Conservative Christians and LGBT citizens alike experience the cessation of neurological, cardiovascular and respiratory activity, are either buried or cremated, and if buried, residual micro-organisms end up dissolving skin, tissue and internal organs until a skeleton is left. That is, unless one is an altruist and decides to distribute one's healthy organs to those who need transplants. That is, unless one lives in Canada, where gay men are banned from such altruistic activity, much to personal tragedies for those who then go without transplants and die as a result, and their loved ones. Finally, there's the subject of necrophilia in this context. I imagine that as there are laws against disturbance of mortal remains on the statute books, this would apply to those who develop a paraphilia for postmortem tumescence, usually straight women. It's illegal because the cadaver probably didn't consent to have their mortal remains used that way. I must confess, I've never heard of anyone who provided posthumous contractual consent, for that matter. In any case, the live party had better be sure that the corpse wasn't swarming with microbes at the time... And therein, our tale is completed. Death doesn't seem to be a barrier to LGBT rights, unlike most of our lives, or so it seems. Recommended: Mary Roach: Stiff: London: Penguin: 2004. D.Gareth Jones: Speaking for the Dead: Cadavers in Medicine and Biology: Ashgate: Aldershot: 2000. Craig Young - 13th April 2009