On Tuesday, the Louisiana House of Representatives will consider HB517, a bill designed to protect health care providers across the state from “liability, discrimination or employment action for refusing to provide certain health care services” according to their conscience.

The original version of the bill was struck down in committee earlier this legislative session for being too broad. Lawmakers went back to the drawing board and crafted a more detailed version of the legislation, and while the changes improved it, the bill still leaves some doors open for serious discrimination against LGBT Louisianians.

The bill protects any “person, employer or entity, whether public or private” from being “held civilly or criminally liable, discriminated against, dismissed, demoted or in any way prejudiced or damaged” for declining to provide or participate in any health care service that violates their conscience.

The bill defines conscience as “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction,” and it also lists some of the practices that would be included under this provision: abortion, dispensation of drugs affecting the reproductive process, artificial insemination, sterilization and physician-assisted suicide.

The real stunner for me is what the bill allows health care workers can refuse to do: “counsel, advise, provide, perform, assist in, refer for, admit for purposes of providing, participate in providing, pay, contract for, or otherwise provide for the payment of, in whole or in part” any service they object to on moral grounds. (Emergency care, however, cannot be declined, according to the bill.)

What does this mean for LGBT Louisianians? A lot. Not only could a health care provider refuse services on the grounds of conscience, they can also refuse to refer that patient to an amenable provider on those grounds as well.

And there’s the rub for many LGBT Louisianians. In a state where moral objection to homosexuality runs neck and neck with moral objection to abortion, we now have to worry that our sexuality might limit our access to the proper health care. A significant portion of our population lives in rural areas, where access to medical care is already sometimes hard to come by. Options for gay men and women across the state are also limited by economic factors: A good percentage of gay men and women in central south Louisiana are middle-class working people, and the option of traveling a few hours for a particular service isn’t necessarily feasible.

For some of us, the mere fact of who we are can mean the difference between proper medical consulting or care and no care at all.

Reproductive freedoms are most in danger with this bill. But its non-specific terms allow for a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription for an HIV medication on moral grounds. A physician could refuse to treat the child of a gay couple. A transgendered person could be refused hormone therapy. A physician could refuse to provide medical services to a person simply on the basis of their sexuality.

This is the disparity between the the rush of progress for our community as a whole and the slow march of progress for gays in the South. We’re still fighting battles that are 20, 30 years old. We’re debating rhetoric that went out of the public debate 15 years ago.

We’re on the ground, though, doing our part here. Our local PFLAG chapter will be gathering a group to protest the bill in Baton Rouge on Tuesday, joined by other groups from across the state. The chapter is only four months old, but they’re raising their collective voice and making their presence known.

What happens to the LGBT community here happens to all of us. And the more times bills like these pass quietly amid the excitement over victories in, say, marriage equality, the further behind we in the South fall.

Our goal is equality for everyone. You don’t have to live here to make a difference for LGBT people who do. For information on HB517 and ways to contact Louisiana state representatives, visit www.legis.state.la.us.

Cody Daigle is the entertainment writer for the Times of Acadiana and a blogger on gay issues for theadvertiser.com.

In addition, Aetna has awarded GLMA a $50,000 grant as the diamond sponsor of GLMA’s 26th Annual Conference scheduled for Oct. 22-25 in Seattle. The conference will feature presentations and workshops on HIV/AIDS; lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual health; substance abuse; aging; families and relationships; and legal issues.

Joel Ginsberg, GLMA’s executive director, said he hopes to see other insurance companies follow Aetna’s lead by linking to the database.

“This is a valuable tool that allows LGBT individuals to find LGBT-friendly health care providers whom they can trust,” said Ginsberg.

“All patients must feel comfortable speaking candidly with their health care providers so that the care delivered is appropriate and effective, and patients can take greater control of their health and well-being,” said Troyen Brennan, M.D., Aetna’s chief medical officer.

“Aetna and the GLMA share a similar goal of eliminating disparities in health care, including unequal health care access and outcomes that critically challenge the American health care system today.”

Openness between patients and their health care providers can be an issue for the LGBT community and can impact their quality of care. A study released in July by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene showed that men who disclose having sex with men to their physicians were twice as likely as those who did not to have been tested for HIV (63 percent vs. 36 percent).

The study also revealed in a survey of 452 New York City men who have sex with other men that 39 percent had not disclosed their sexual orientation to their doctors.

Any provider who is willing to affirm their commitment to providing a welcoming environment for LGBT patients and clients is invited to join the GLMA Provider Directory, the association said. GLMA also has resources available for providers on how to meet the unique health care needs of LGBT individuals, which includes creating an environment where patients can feel comfortable talking openly.

Aetna said it will alert its participating health care providers of the link between the DocFind tool and GLMA’s database to raise additional awareness of GLMA among providers.

Aetna has earned the top rating of 100 percent in the 2009 Corporate Equality Index by the Human Rights Campaign. This is the seventh consecutive year that Aetna has received a perfect score for its service to LGBT employees and consumers.