Trump Versus LGBTQ+
Heterosexual couples have always needed to have been married for the partner of a U.N. official or diplomat to receive a visa. Because of same- sex marriage being only recently legal, homosexual couples would need an official domestic partnership in order for a diplomat’s partner to hold a visa. The Trump administration has now decided that is not good enough.
As of October 1st, the Trump administration has stopped granting visas to the same-sex partners of U.N. officials and diplomats. These couples now face the dilemma of either separating for an extended amount of time or getting married whether or not they are ready to. For unmarried partners already holding visas in the U.S., a deadline has been set for the beginning of 2019. If they are not married by then they will have a thirty day period to gather their belongings and leave the country.
Justification for this move is just as ridiculous as it sounds. The card the Trump administration is playing is that same-sex marriage is now legal so gay and straight couples should have to deal with the same rules. At first glance that seems very reasonable. Everything should be equal so that no one gets an upper hand, right? Well, it is not as simple as that. Heterosexual couples do not face the same persecution as homosexual ones do. A straight couple could go anywhere in the world and just get married and there would be no trouble. Homosexuality is still illegal in many countries let alone homosexual marriage so the illusion of equality here is exactly that, an illusion.
This decision would mean that numerous gay couples would have to come to the U.S. on a tourist visa in order to get married before the diplomat could return to work. The process is unnecessarily time consuming and expensive and then there is no guarantee that the couple’s problems would end there. Not to mention this means that same-sex couples are now either being forced into marriage whether they are ready to make that commitment or not or being forced to separate. Anyone who could think that this is equality is utterly naive.
The Trump administration is not taking into account that homosexuals face many problems globally, not just in the U.S. This seems more like a step backwards, if anything, and in the words of Samantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, ¨needlessly cruel and bigoted¨.