While most of the country was embroiled in the fight over whether alleged devil's triangulator Brett Kavanaugh deserved a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, the State Department announced that it is going to require foreign diplomats and U.N. employees who are living in the U.S. with their same-sex life partners to get married or ship their honey home.
Diplomats and United Nations officials in same-sex couples who wish to keep U.S. visas, or are in the process of acquiring them, must show proof of marriage by December 31. If they fail to do so, partners of diplomats and officials will “be expected to leave the United States within 30 days unless they submit the required proof of marriage or have obtained separate authorization to remain in the country through a change of non-immigrant status.”Ostensibly, this is supposed to have something to do with Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex marriage three years ago, although it's very difficult to see how marriage equality in this country should force people to get married who don't have to obey our parking regulations.
This is not something that any LGBTQ group of any kind has been pushing for, or had even dreamed up, so it's difficult to imagine what the Corrupt Trump Administration is trying to accomplish. As our former Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Powers pointed out, only 12% of U.N. member states allow same-sex couples to get married. Many countries in Africa, the former Soviet bloc, and Asia actively criminalize their LGBTQ citizens. This new rule is not going to pressure antigay regimes to turn around and embrace marriage equality; it's more likely to result in the persecution of those same-sex partners, and probably the recall and disappearance of the diplomats they were living with.
Which leads me to suspect that maybe there is some particular diplomat Trump wants to get rid of, and this is some sneaky way of going about it.
Whatever the reason, you can be sure it's over something petty.
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