re: "Department Of State Sponsoring Visa Fraud"

Federale ("That Is The Sound Of Inevitability") maintained a certain point of view.

Money quote(s):

"The Department of State (DOS) continues its campaign to undermine and unconstitutionally violate the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA). Hillary Clinton authorized the DOS to be the sponsor for non-immigrant visas in the J-1 category for the non-resident aliens who are having sex with a DOS employee.

The J-1 visa is not for people having sex with a DOS employee, but for cultural and education exchange. At no point was its purpose to aid government employees to engage in sex outside of marriage."

Sec. Clinton has been pretty forward-leaning on the issues related to gay marriage.

What Federale is talking about is using the J-1 non-immigrant visa category for non-U.S. citizen same-sex partners of American diplomats, so that they may accompany their diplomat spouses when they receive domestic assignments in the U.S.

Not every U.S. diplomat has a same-sex partner. Many have spouses whose marriages are recognized in every state in the union.

"Nor was it designed to avoid obtaining an immigrant visa as the pretend spouse of an American citizen. Remember it was created by a Congress of white, heterosexual, males who never contemplation its use as a substitute for homosexual marriage."

Since most FSOs will not spend more than five years (at most) at a stretch in the U.S. (it's the foreign service, after all), it's not really an immigrant visa.

This move is something of a stop-gap measure, getting a little bit ahead of the legislation (or judicial activism) on the matter.

There's also something of a reciprocity issue at play here, since other countries will allow unmarried domestic partners, including same-sex spouses, to accompany our (and their) diplomats.

7/28

re: "Gay marriage: as New York goes, so goes."

Neo-Neocon (" to tell the tale of my political change and provide a forum for others") seems to approve of New York's gay marriage law.

Money quote(s):

"New York has legalized gay marriage in the best way possible: at the state level, by legislation, and with exemptions for “religious organizations to refuse to perform services or lend space for same-sex weddings.”

This is far better than legislation by court rulings, and far better than a federal law."

&

"I do know that I believe that the religious exemptions in the New York law are important, and that they may indeed be threatened by challenges in the future."

My apologies to both my readers for veering into this issue. I'll enter a plea of "this connects with consular work due to the Defense of Marriage Act."

Neo-Neocon correctly notes perhaps the most critical line-in-the-sand relating to this issue: future potential coercion of religious authorities to require they provide marriage services to same-sex couples.

"They" will say that's just nonsense and alarmism, that "they" just want equal standing in civil law. But this is not just a "slippery slope" issue (as Neo-Neocon describes it), but it is also a moving-the-goal-posts issue. Every time ground is gained on a "gay rights" issue that activests publicly swear is all they really want, it's not more than three-to-five years before the next, previously unthinkable, goalpost is reached for.

As Neo-Neocon also remarks, "this question will be moot in another generation or two in most states, because younger people are far more likely to support the legalization of gay marriage than older people are." This is key.

But what is also key is what in the short term will become a third-rail issue for those who cling bitterly to their religion and guns. They will not much cotton to being told, or having their churches told, that they must now practise as a sacrament what would previously have been considered a mortal sin.

Better writers than I, with better imaginations, can readily flesh-out the details of an alternate future where federal agents force the "integration" of churches as a civil rights issue, or, even worse, act out this century's version of the Waco massacre. All of this could proceed, quite logically and predictably, from the legal and legislative developments of today, plus a few years for the voting public to forget the current administration's failings long enough to elect another one like it.

I don't much fear same-sex marriage personally. I'm a U.S. foreign service officer working for the State Department: it's not like I've never met a same-sex couple.

What I do fear is federal over-reach into those freedoms actually and specifically enumerated, cited, and protected in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. That kind of arrogant stupidity causes civil wars.