…this new rule opens the door to all visitors the patient considers important. It’s a radical step toward embracing an approach to “family” that breaks us out of the Dad, Mom, Bud and Sis configuration that still looms so large in the American imagination and in its laws despite the fact that fewer and fewer of us live in those family units. Now you can be by your best friend’s side whether you’re Carmelite nuns or used to play soccer together, or work together or look alike or not. It doesn’t matter whether your aunt approves of you and your “shiksa whore” girlfriend or your transgender spouse, so long as your cousin wants you there.
