Trump Regime Will Deny Visas to Same-Sex Partners of Diplomats

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instituted a policy making same-sex partners of U.S. and foreign diplomats eligible for the same benefits as any spouse. The policy "extended to all unmarried domestic partners," both same-sex and different-sex, thus not requiring that anyone be legally married to access family services.

In 2016, Donald Trump stole the election from the architect of that eminently decent and fair policy, and now his administration is reversing that policy, reports Colum Lynch at Foreign Policy — and justifying the decision by mendaciously implying that same-sex diplomats were getting special rights.

"Same-sex spouses of U.S. diplomats now enjoy the same rights and benefits as opposite-sex spouses," the U.S. mission wrote in a July 12 note to U.N.-based delegations. "Consistent with [State] Department policy, partners accompanying members of permanent missions or seeking to join the same must generally be married in order to be eligible" for a diplomatic visa.

In other words: Now that same-sex marriage is legal in the United States, same-sex partners don't get any special treatment. But they weren't getting special treatment in the first place. Clinton's inclusive policy made sure of that.

The Trump Regime now insists that same-sex partners must be married, and has begun "denying visas to same-sex domestic partners of foreign diplomats and United Nations employees, and requiring those already in the United States to get married by the end of the year or leave the country."

This, despite the fact that same-sex marriage — or even homosexuality itself — may not be legal in foreign diplomats' home countries. It is an absurd standard, which either exposes or forces back into a closet the people who are most vulnerable to state-sanctioned retribution for being in same-sex relationships.

Which is almost certainly the entire point. As I keep saying: Malice is the central governing principle of the Trump Regime.

Samantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, denounced the new policy on Twitter as "needlessly cruel & bigoted."

"State Dept. will no longer let same-sex domestic partners of UN employees get visas unless they are married," she tweeted, noting that "only 12% of UN member states allow same-sex marriage."

This, I will note, is one of the many intricacies of federal policy about which Donald Trump is utterly clueless because he is utterly disinterested. It is, however, precisely the sort of thing around which Mike Pence has built his whole sickening career. This has Pence's filthy, homophobic fingerprints all over it.

Trump must go. And so must everyone else in his entire contemptible administration.