United Nations headquarters in New York City — Photo: Neptuul / Wikimedia Commons
The Trump administration has stopped issuing visas to the same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, officials, and United Nations employees.
Effective as of Monday, Oct. 1, the new policy dictates that only those who are married to their same-sex partner will be issued visas — regardless of whether the official or employee is from a country that has legalized same-sex marriage — Foreign Policy magazine reports.
In a memo circulated at U.N. headquarters in New York, same-sex partners were effectively told they had until the end of 2018 to get married or get out of the country. Currently, only 27 countries around the world have legalized same-sex marriage.
The United States said the change in policy was intended to reflect current practices for U.S. diplomats, where spousal visas are only granted to married spouses following the legalization of marriage equality nationwide in 2015.
It revoked a policy introduced by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 to extend visas to domestic partners to accommodate same-sex diplomats and officials.
Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, called the move by the Trump administration “needlessly cruel and bigoted” in a tweet.
Needlessly cruel & bigoted: State Dept. will no longer let same-sex domestic partners of UN employees get visas unless they are married. But only 12% of UN member states allow same-sex marriage. https://t.co/MjZpRVLYcf
Foreign Policy estimated that at least 10 U.N. employees would be affected by the change. Fabrice Houdart, Human Rights Officer at the United Nations, noted one particular example in a Facebook post after the policy change was announced in July.
“An example of who the policy change could affect is an Italian lesbian economist, working for the United Nations here in NYC, her partner and her biological child,” Houdart wrote. “Since 2009, at the initiative of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…the partner and her child could obtain G-4 visas from the State department to join the mother in NYC provided they registered their domestic partnership with the UN (or the World Bank or the IMF). This would not be the case any longer and coming December 2018, the lesbian partner and child would be expected to return to Italy within 30 days.”
Houdart said that the couple could get married in America, but that would not automatically guarantee that the spouse would be allowed to remain in the country, noting that the policy requires that documentation of marriage come from the “sending State,” not the U.S.
“Indeed, under the public policy exception, if one’s US marriage violates the public policy of one’s home country, then the marriage would not automatically be valid,” Houdart wrote.
However, UN-GLOBE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ U.N. workers, said in a tweet that “it’s up to the UN to decide what location qualifies as a marriage issuer for a visa, not the state dept.”
In a statement, UN-GLOBE called the policy move “an unfortunate change in rules, since same-sex couples, unlike opposite-sex couples, have limited choices when it comes to marriage.”
“If you are already in New York City, consider getting married in City Hall, but make sure you fulfill all requirements,” it added.
Gun rights groups are blasting the Trump administration after CNN reported that senior Justice Department officials have been discussing the possibility of restricting transgender U.S. citizens from owning firearms, following the recent mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis. Although officials described the talks as "preliminary," critics warn that even floating such a proposal scapegoats transgender people and threatens their constitutional rights.
The internal talks appeared to draw on a theory promoted by conservative influencers and media outlets: that transgender people are mentally ill, and that transition-related hormones negatively affect mental health, making them more prone to violence.
Jason Collins, the first openly gay NBA player, is reportedly undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. Collins made headlines more than a decade ago when he came out publicly in a first-person essay for Sports Illustrated.
The 41-year-old former center earned All-American honors at Stanford before being drafted by the Houston Rockets in 2001. Over his 13-year career, he played for several NBA teams, including the New Jersey Nets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, and Brooklyn Nets.
Human rights groups, including LGBTQ advocates, accuse the U.S. State Department of politicizing its annual report on global abuses by erasing references to anti-LGBTQ discrimination. According to Al Jazeera, the 2024 Human Rights Report was released months late after Trump appointees rewrote an earlier draft to align with the administration's "America First" agenda.
The revised report, released last Tuesday, adds new categories like "Life," "Liberty," and "Security of the Person." The State Department called the report "streamlined" and said it was designed to stay "aligned to the administration's executive orders."
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