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Confirmed: Trump Is Using the State Dept to Wage War on Legally Married American Same-Sex Families

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Last week, we reported on a legally-married same-sex couple who are in court – again. After having won their case months ago, the federal government appealed. They are battling the U.S. State Dept., which is insisting one of their twin boys is not a U.S. citizen, even though both twins are their biological children.

Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks married in 2010. Andrew is an American citizen, Elad is not.

The State Dept. is refusing to grant U.S. citizenship to one of the two twins, and holding the family to an entirely different standard than if they were a different-sex couple.

Trump’s State Dept. is actually ignoring settled law, according to Aaron C. Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality.

And if you read that story and thought it was a one-off, some random act by the State Dept., it turns out it’s not.

The Daily Beast reports that a different same-sex couple, both U.S. citizens, had a daughter born in Canada with the assistance of an egg donor and a gestational surrogate.

The U.S. State Dept. is refusing to grant her U.S. citizenship.

“We are both American citizens,” Adiel Kiviti told The Daily Beast, saying, “we live in the U.S.; I have a business here, Roee has his job here; we file our taxes as a married couple here… and the State Department is saying that our daughter isn’t entitled to U.S. citizenship because she was born ‘out of wedlock.’”

Apparently, the State Dept. under Secretary Mike Pompeo, has redefined the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 which, “along with the 14th Amendment, codifies eligibility for U.S. birthright citizenship,” The Daily Beast explains.

Assisted reproductive technology, most of which did not exist in 1952, produces children born “out of wedlock,” according to the State Dept.’s flawed and very targeted interpretation.

“They basically take our marriage, and they say, ‘It doesn’t mean anything. Your child was born out of wedlock,’” Adiel says. “We were there when she was born, she took her first breaths in our arms. Make no mistake: we are her parents — we are her only parents on her only birth certificate.”

The Daily Beast’s article includes the stories of another two married same-sex couples who experienced similar targeted discrimination from the U.S. State Dept.

There is no mistake here: The Trump administration is targeting U.S. citizen same-sex couples, doing everything it can to tear apart their families and depriving them of their 14th Amendment rights, merely because they are same-sex couples.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by U.S. State Dept. via Flickr and a CC license

Shocker Of the Year: Trump Opposes The Equality Act

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President Donald Trump opposes adding the LGBTQ community to the list of groups protected by the Civil Rights Act. We wish we could say we were surprised.

I’m making a rule: sarcasm is permissible in news headlines if I’m fed up enough. And like a lot of you out there, I am fed up.

President Donald Trump, who took office back at the beginning of 2017 despite the state of Virginia’s best efforts (continued condolences to all of us), campaigned on a pro-LGBTQ platform. Remember that? “Thank you to the LGBT community!” and all that rot?

Well, if we didn’t know it was bullshit then (and more fool us if we didn’t), we sure found out once he took office and his administration immediately began making moves like gutting Civil Rights Act protections that had been interpreted by the previous administration to apply on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity — most notably in the case of transgender children who went to school one morning and found out the US Department of Education didn’t have their back anymore.

And then there was the ban on transgender people in the military. Don’t even get me started on that one. Let me merely say we are still fighting that battle, and move on.

Now, to top it all off, word has come via the Washington Blade from sources within the administration who’ve made it clear that Donald Trump hates the Equality Act.

The Equality Act, which is scheduled for a floor vote in the House of Representatives on Friday, amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to remove all the gray areas around discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity. Previous attempts to cover such discrimination under the Civil Rights Act have revolved around a legal interpretation of the word “sex” — which ultimately depends on what the administration in power want it to mean.

The Equality Act would amend not only the Civil Rights Act but the Fair Housing Act to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in a wide variety of situations, including employment, housing, education, public accomodations, and more.

In an email, a senior Trump administration official (we don’t know which one) told the Blade, “The Trump administration absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all; however, this bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.”

The “poison pills” the official seems to be referring to would be nothing more than a simple requirement that people couldn’t fire a gay or trans person for being who they are, couldn’t refuse to rent to them or, most critically, to give them medical treatment, due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Such prohibitions are currently in place for racial minorities, ethnic minorities, women, and religious groups of all kinds, among others.

The Washington Blade points out that Trump made statements when he campaigned for the Reform Party’s nomination for president in 2000 that supported adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act. However, that was nearly two decades ago by now, and over his past two and a half years as the actual president, he’s been largely supportive of anti-LGBTQ causes that have cloaked their discrimination in the rhetoric of “religious freedom.”

And of course, the public debate around the trans military ban has made it eminently clear where he stands on the subject of transgender and non-binary people.

So really, this news is not a surprise. It’s just another in a long line of consistent anti-LGBTQ policy from the Trump White House, which will presumably continue until such a time as we vote him out. But it has the possibility of really disrupting potential legal gains for the LGBTQ community — assuming the Equality Act could pass both houses of Congress (which, of course, is by no means guaranteed), it would face an almost-certain veto at the presidential level. At which point all of the legally-justified discrimination we’ve faced since January 2017 would be free to continue as it has for the past two years.

Looks like this administration isn’t going to take its boot off our necks anytime soon, y’all.

Photo via Donald Trump/Twitter

US State Dept. Goes to Court Again to Try to Tear Apart This Married Same-Sex Couple’s Twins

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The State Department is attempting to block citizenship for the child of a same-sex couple, on a basis that would never be used against a different-sex couple. It’s discrimination, and a Federal Judge has said as much.

The U.S. State Dept. lost a federal court ruling that found it was discriminating against a legally-married same-sex couple. And now it’s appealing that ruling, hoping to block that couple’s child from being granted U.S. citizenship.

At issue: one of two twins. The twins are the biological children of Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks, who married in 2010. Andrew is an American citizen, Elad is not.

Were Andrew and Elan a different-sex couple, the State Dept. would not be trying to block granting U.S. citizenship to one of their two twin boys, Aiden and Ethan Dvash-Banks.

The Daily Beast reports “the State Department has held the Dvash-Bankses to a different standard, requiring the family to undergo DNA testing to establish that Aiden—but not Ethan—was the biological son of a U.S. citizen.”

A biological link is not necessary to confer citizenship to children of different-sex couples.

It’s discrimination, pure and simple, and a federal judge agreed.

“The basis for the State Department’s imposition of a biological requirement is its strained interpretation” of existing immigration law, U.S. District Judge John F. Walter wrote, as The Daily Beast noted.

Aaron C. Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality says previous decisions in other cases have already established precedent. That would  make the State Dept.’s argument unlawful.

“This is settled law in the Ninth Circuit, which has already established that citizenship may pass from a married parent to a child regardless of whether or not they have a biological relationship,” Morris says.

“We’re outraged that the State Department is so intent on harming our family and the LGBTQ community,” Andrew and Elad said in a statement. “The fight is not over, and we will not rest until our family is treated fairly and equally. Nothing can tear us apart. The four of us are unbreakable.”

Here’s a video from Immigration Equality about the couple’s case:

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM/Immigration Equality

Trump Plan Grants Doctors Special Religious Rights to Deny Care to Transgender Patients, Women Seeking Abortions

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As if doctor visits didn’t give us enough reason to worry as it is.

The Trump administration is finalizing details on its plan to grant special religious “rights” to medical professionals who claim a moral objection to providing care to transgender patients, or women seeking an abortion, among others.

The new rules would roll back Obama-era protections, according to a report by Politico.

The Trump administration’s so-called “conscience regulations” would extend far beyond those two scenarios.

The proposal, which would directly impact the Dept. of Health and Human Services, “would give HHS ‘a lot more authority and power’ to effectively remake and enforce existing conscience protections, said Katie Keith, a Georgetown University law professor who’s studied the regulations,” Politico notes.

For instance, a medical school receiving federal funds could not deny admission to applicants who refuse to perform abortions; providers could not require staff to inform patients about services like sterilization procedures or advance directives rejecting end-of-life care; and doctors and nurses would gain further protections to refuse providing services like vaccinations.

The forthcoming HHS nondiscrimination rules are the latest example of President Donald Trump violating a campaign pledge to protect the LGBTQ community, advocates for transgender people say. The administration’s ban on transgender troops took effect just weeks ago, and the health department reportedly tried to effectively eliminate the federal definition of “transgender.”

It’s possible the “conscience regulations” might extend to those who practice harmful “reparative” or “conversion” therapy, a pseudoscientific practice falsely purports to turn LGBTQ straight.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by torbakhopper via Flickr and a CC license

Supreme Court Will Rule On Legal Protections For LGBTQ People

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In three cases, the Supreme Court will rule on whether gay and trans people can be fired for their LGBTQ status — and we’ll learn just how conservative the Trump Supreme Court really is.

In potentially troubling news out of Washington, the Supreme Court announced Monday that they will review three cases that concern the LGBTQ community’s inclusion under the employment protections in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Specifically, two of the cases the highest court in the land will take up concern whether the Civil Rights Act, which specifically protects against discrimination by “sex,” also applies to sexual orientation. The two cases they will hear on this subject went opposite ways at the lower court level. In Altitude Express v. Zarda, the 2nd Circuit Court found in favor of a man who was fired for being gay, while in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the 11th Circuit Court found in favor of Clayton County’s child welfare services program, which had fired an employee for being gay.

The Supreme Court will hear a third case, RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in which a trans woman was fired from a Michigan funeral home after she came out to her employers and said she’d begin wearing women’s clothing at work. The question being considered by the Supreme Court here is whether the woman’s firing falls under sex discrimination due to her being fired for not conforming to gender stereotypes.

These cases are the first big cases related to LGBTQ rights for the Supreme Court to consider since Donald Trump appointed two conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and the infamous Brett Kavanaugh, to the court. Rulings will tell us a good deal about what direction the Supreme Court will take in future years, and how safe LGBTQ rights are under the Court’s Trump-shaped makeup.

The cases should be argued in the fall, and we will likely hear a ruling by summer of 2020 — just in time for the presidential campaign to reach full boil. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

Photo: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Public Domain/via Wikimedia

House Of Representatives Passes Resolution Denouncing Trans Military Ban

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The resolution is non-binding, which makes it more symbolic than anything, but that’s something… right?

One can’t help but feel that we’ll be hearing about the trans military ban in some form or another for the rest of the Trump presidency — even if said presidency extends all the way until 2024 (perish the thought). Last month, we heard that the Pentagon had set an official date on which the ban would finally go into effect — April 12, less than two weeks from today. Then a week later, Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly reminded the Defense Department that the injunction she instituted on the ban last October is still in place.

Now, the House Of Representatives has passed a non-binding resolution denouncing the ban. The resolution was introduced by Massachusetts Representative Joe Kennedy III, and passed after an hour of floor debate last Thursday.

“Today, this House has a chance to not repeat the mistakes of our past, to move one step closer to that sacred promise, by telling brave trans men and women in uniform that they cannot be banned from military service because of who they are,” Kennedy said, according to the Washington Blade.

But how much consolation can we take from this? After all, the resolution is indeed non-binding. Despite the fact that it passed by a vote of 238-185, the resolution has no legal power to compel the action of the Executive Branch, meaning that the institution of the ban is still in Trump administration hands.

What’s more, only five of the House’s 190 Republicans chose to vote in favor of the resolution, despite the fact that a Quinnipiac University Poll published by the Washington Blade in January found that 70 percent of the country supports transgender people having the opportunity to serve in the military.

New York Senator and current Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand has introduced a bill in the Senate that would stop the military from discharging qualified service members based on transgender status, while California Representative Jackie Speier has introduced a corresponding bill into the House. Speier hopes to amend the annual defense spending authorization with her bill, which, if she accomplished such a thing, would result in Trump having to approve an end to trans-related discharges in order to get his defense budget for the year. One imagines this leading to yet another government shutdown.

But for now, all we have is this non-binding resolution — and, of course, the trans pride flags several Congressmembers flew outside their offices last week to display support for International Transgender Day of Visibility. Such symbolic displays are nice, but how long must we get by on such things, without concrete civil rights legislation? It seems we’re all about to find out.

Photo via Congressman Andy Levin/Twitter