LGBT

Partners Mike Konigsfeld and Tom Brandl in Cologne, Germany have designed a coffin for gay male funerals. If you look carefully you can see that it is festooned with muscly naked men.

There’s no doubting the business sense behind the idea. As Mike says, “People are cutting back in the recession but the one group of consumers who still have high spending power are gay couples and very few people are designing for them in this market.”

Yes, there’s money to be made. Which is perhaps why, in Britain, the only gay funeral service I have come across, Pink Partings, is ‘partnered’ by our old friends Co-operative Funeralcare who, as they say, and we believe them, “operate in accordance with the values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.”

If only they knew…

There’s a new blog over in the US which describes itself as “a revealing look from beneath the veil of silence. The purpose of this blog is to bring truth to funeral consumers, which is often masked by an industry driven by profits. What makes this site different? The creator is a licensed funeral director & embalmer who, after many years in the profession, became disenchanted with many of the tactics and unethical practices of the industry.”

It probably doesn’t tell any readers of this blog anything they didn’t already know. It’s revealing all the same.

The practice of embalming polarises opinions like nothing else. For all its ungentleness its best practitioners are some of the gentlest and most caring people in the deathcare industry.

In his latest post, the blog’s author, Mark DeSteffan, discusses embalming with the aid of video clips. Well worth reading. But here’s a caution: don’t watch the clips unless you’ve got an especially strong stomach.

How much should funeral consumers know about what goes on in a funeral director’s mortuary? For those who reject embalming, how much do they need to know about how the mouth is closed?

What constitutes informed consent?

Find the Business of Death blog here.

The Good Funeral Guide
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