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.
Editor's Note: This in-depth interview with David Mixner, who passed away on Monday, March 11, 2024, at the age of 77, originally appeared in the issue of July 29, 2004. Photography by Todd Franson.
"You want a soundbite?"
David Mixner grins.
"I'll give you a soundbite. I'm a man who's devoted forty years of his life -- sometimes at great validation and sometimes at great pain -- to the struggle for freedom and human rights.
"You know, when I was a child growing up," he continues, "we didn't have television, but we got Life magazine. And it opened the outside world to us. As a kid I said, 'I want to live the history of my times. I want to witness it.' And then I got to a second level where I said, 'God, if I could just meet and shake the hands of the people making the history of my times, I'd be happy.' And then I said to myself, 'If I could just be a tiny footnote in the history of my times.'
"It's really sad, isn't it?" says Ethan Coen. "That we can't call it that."
Coen is lamenting the fact that his latest movie, the magnificently spry, lesbian-centric jaunt Drive-Away Dolls, was unable to be released under its original moniker: "Drive-Away Dykes."
"It was something just for commercial reasons," adds Tricia Cooke, who co-wrote the film with Coen and edited the finished product. "There are movie theaters that won't release the movie with that title and the MPA kind of dictates what your title can be. We were told we couldn't use it."
The owners of a Buffalo-area pizzeria recently agreed to pay $25,000 to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of a transgender man formerly employed by the restaurant.
Last month, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which brought the lawsuit against T.C. Wheelers Bar & Pizzeria, in Tonawanda, N.Y., on behalf of former cook Quinn Gambino, announced the settlement agreement.
The lawsuit stemmed from verbal harassment and abuse that Gambino was subjected to from restaurant managers and co-workers between January and May 2021.
According to the EEOC's lawsuit, the owners and staff of the restaurant -- as well as customers -- repeatedly misgendered Gambino, who noted that he was male and did not reveal his transgender status when he first applied for the job.
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