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US State Department Ends Discriminatory Policy Targeting Same-Sex Families

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Under Trump, the US State Department prohibited children born outside the United States from gaining US citizenship unless they were biologically related to both parents, a policy that targeted LGBTQ families almost exclusively. Last week, Biden’s State Dept. ended that policy.

The U.S. State Dept. under Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday ended a Trump-era policy targeted directly against LGBTQ families. The policy, supported by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, mandated that children born outside the United States to parents who are U.S. citizens must be biologically related to both parents, or they would not be allowed to be granted U.S. citizenship.

The discriminatory policy ensnared only same-sex couples, and hewed to Pompeo and Trump’s anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant beliefs.

In a statement, U.S. Department of State Spokesperson Ned Price said the “updated interpretation and application of the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] takes into account the realities of modern families and advances in ART [assisted reproductive technology] from when the Act was enacted in 1952.”

In one case NCRM reported on in 2019, the Pompeo State Dept. actually allowed one of two biological twins to be granted U.S. citizenship but prohibited the other from the exact same rights.

The non-profit group Immigration Equality in a statement Tuesday said the Trump-era policy had affected “many married same-sex couples,” and noted that “the Immigration and Nationality Act has never required a biological relationship for married parents. As such, every federal court that heard the issue found that the State Department’s policy was inconsistent with the statute.” 

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM.

Rights Activists Alarmed as Pompeo Installs Anti-Gay Anti-Abortion Activist to Head New Commission on “Natural Law”

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Pompeo hopes to redefine the entire concept of “human rights,” and to do so he’s hired a woman with a decades-long record of anti-LGBTQ activism.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced the formation of a new commission that will take a “fresh look” at human rights through the lens of “natural law,” and civil and human rights advocates are outraged. In preliminary filings the State Dept. noted the Commission will explore “our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”

“Natural law,” is religious right wing extremist code for anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights, especially marriage for same-sex couples.

Critics are outraged.

The director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program weighed in:

Secretary Pompeo, a known right wing Christian extremist in his own right, has named Mary Ann Glendon, a professor who is also his former mentor, to lead the “Commission on Unalienable Rights.”

Glendon is an anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic activist who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See (the Vatican) under President George W. Bush. She is also known for her opposition to the use of condoms to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“I hope that the commission will revisit the most basic of questions: What does it mean to claim something is, in fact, a human right?” Pompeo told reporters Monday, adding, as Yahoo News notes, that “words like rights can be used for good or evil.”

Glendon should understand Pompeo’s remarks. She penned a 2004 op-ed supporting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In a unique twist of language she claimed the amendment “should be welcomed by all Americans who are concerned about equality and preserving democratic decision-making.”

And in a shocking move Glendon chastised the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize to the Boston Globe for its work exposing pedophile priests. She reportedly said, “If fairness & accuracy have anything to do with it, awarding the Pulitzer to the Boston Globe would be like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden.”

Anti-gay hate group leader Tony Perkins was briefed on the Commission before it was officially announced, CBS News reports.

A State Dept. official says the Commission is a “personal project” of Secretary Pompeo’s, and Politico reports the Commission “was conceived with almost no input from the State Department’s human rights bureau, people familiar with the matter say, effectively sidelining career government experts who have focused on human rights policy and history across numerous administrations.”

As extreme as Glendon is, the preliminary proposed Chair was Robert P. George, a Princeton professor who co-founded the extremely anti-gay National Organization For Marriage (NOM).

Meanwhile, Amnesty International issued a scathing rebuke to Pompeo and his new Commission. In “Trump Administration Commission on Unalienable Rights Politicizes Human Rights for Hate,” the human rights organization’s national director of advocacy and government affairs, Joanne Lin, said:

“This administration has actively worked to deny and take away long-standing human rights protections since Trump’s inauguration. If this administration truly wanted to support people’s rights, it would use the global framework that’s already in place. Instead, it wants to undermine rights for individuals, as well as the responsibilities of governments.”

“This approach only encourages other countries to adopt a disregard for basic human rights standards and risks weakening international, as well as regional frameworks, placing the rights of millions of people around the world in jeopardy.”

“International agreements, like the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, have been upheld by prior administrations over the last 71 years, regardless of their party. This politicization of human rights in order to, what appears to be an attempt to further hateful policies aimed at women and LGBTQ people, is shameful.”

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

State Dept. Quietly Creates Commission Focused on ‘Fresh Thinking’ About ‘Natural Rights’ – Code for Anti-LGBTQ

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The U.S. State Dept. on Thursday quietly published a notice in the Federal Registerannouncing it creating a new commission to provide “fresh thinking” about “natural law and natural rights,” which is the religious right’s code for anti-LGBTQ.

The “Commission on Unalienable Rights” will “provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights,” the notice states.

Politico reports human rights activists are “surprised,” and “privately said they worry that talk of the ‘nation’s founding principles’ and ‘natural law’ are coded signals of plans to focus less on protecting women and LGBT people.”

In fact, Christian extremists, anti-gay hate groups, and other factions of the religious right often argue against LGBTQ civil rights, including same-sex marriage, as violations of “natural law.”

The newly-formed Commission on Unalienable Rights will directly advise Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It appears it may be headed by his Director of Policy Planning, Kiron Skinner, whose name appears at the bottom of the notice.

Pompeo is a far right religious extremist who has openly stated the function of politics is to “fight these battles” because there is a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture,” as The New York Times has reported. He has also said the Bible “informs everything I do.”

Skinner is a highly-accomplished and noted scholar who recently caused an international stir. Professor Skinner at a public forum on national security told attendees that America’s upcoming competition with China would be especially bitter, as Foreign Policy reported, because, she said, “it’s the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian.”

The Trump administration has a horrific record on human rights here in the U.S. and internationally. At home, Trump has now rolled back or rescinded every protection for transgender people codified under President Barack Obama, including but not limited to evicting transgender Americans from the U.S. Armed Forces. He and has administration are working to remove hard-won protections across the board for LGBTQ people and women. Internationally, the President repeatedly praises and protects dictators who are responsible for the murder of their own people. Just one example: Trump’s claim that he and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un “fell in love.”

But Trump has also prioritized defending, promoting, and even creating special rights for Christian conservatives over U.S. law and over decades of U.S. foreign policy.

The Commission on Unalienable Rights appears to be the next step in the process.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image by U.S. Dept. of State via Flickr 

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

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