Watching the Trump administration roll out policy after policy subtly targeting the LGBTQ community, some queer Americans have been waiting for the administration to find a way to target gay marriage without being able to reverse the Supreme Court’s nationwide legalization.
Claiming that the move is intended to apply “equal treatment” to all couples, the State Department has begun denying visas to same-sex partners of United Nations employees and foreign diplomats. Those already in the United States must get married by the new year or be forced to leave the country.
The United States currently grants diplomatic visas only to married spouses of diplomats for opposite-sex couples, a policy the administration is using to justify its new marriage requirement for same-sex couples. They’ve portrayed the decision as an effort to create an ironic kind of equality between gay and straight couples — because straight people have to get married, so should gay people.
Fundamentally, it doesn’t make sense that anyone should have to get married in order to receive a diplomatic visa. But regardless, this is a way for the Trump administration to take away what they see as an unfair advantage gay couples currently have — to crack down against homosexuality in a way they can claim isn’t explicitly discriminatory.
At least 10 U.N. employees would need to get married by this January, according to Foreign Policy.
The wellbeing of at least 10 people is at risk. If they get legally married in the United States, they may not be able to return to their home countries without risk of persecution. Gay marriage is illegal in 88 percent of UN member states, some of which punish gay relationships with the death penalty.
The U.S. government can’t pretend it doesn’t know this. Beyond taking away these couples’ right to have the wedding that they want and deserve, it’s putting lives at risk. Sometimes there’s a reason why there are different rules for two different demographics — in this case, it’s because the lives of foreign diplomats in same-sex relationships will be at risk if they’re forced to get married, and the same cannot be said for straight couples.
Even disregarding the safety risks spouses will face if they do get married, there are many other factors that would make executing a wedding by the end of the year difficult. The amount of time it can take to plan a wedding far exceeds the three months these employees will have until the hourglass runs out and their spouse is kicked out of the country. Though it’s possible to scrape together a hasty wedding or simply get a marriage license and hold the ceremony at a courthouse, nobody should be forced to sacrifice a real wedding under threat of deportation.
Not everyone has the financial resources to pull a wedding together at the drop of a hat. It can take years for couples to amass the kind of savings required to host the kind of wedding they desire. If you’ve ever watched ABC’s “Say Yes to the Dress,” you know how expensive a piece of white fabric can be.
A wedding is supposed to be one of the most special events in a person’s life. Forcing gay couples to get married against their terms and rush or miss out on a process they should be entitled to under the guise of “making things equal” is an injustice.
There are two kinds of equality: equality of opportunity and equality of result. You can look at equality as giving everyone the same thing, or you can look at it as targeting different policies at different groups to ensure that they reach a level playing field. The latter is what should truly be considered equality.
Holding gay and straight couples to the same requirements or expectations doesn’t account for the disadvantages gay people face. They’re starting off at an imbalanced place, without the same amount of choice to reveal their sexual orientation to their families or officials of their home countries.
In the U.N., straight diplomats do have to get married to be eligible for diplomatic visas, but they aren’t made to feel threatened as though their presence is unwelcomed in the United States. Getting married does not prevent them from returning to their home country or seeing their families again.
This new policy is a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. It’s entirely ideological, grounded in neither fact nor logic, but the idea that gay people have something that straight people don’t and that that is inherently wrong.
U.N. officials are people who play a role in international politics and facilitate international conversations. Threatening the presence of gay diplomats tells the world that all men — with an asterisk — are created equal. It sends the message that the administration will make whatever roundabout attempts possible to keep gay people out of the political conversation.
