On the first day of LGBT History Month, the Trump administration began to deny visas to unmarried same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and United Nations employees, according to a report in Foreign Policy.
As of Monday, regardless of their home country’s laws or customs, the administration has also started taking the extraordinary step of ordering any unmarried partners to exit the U.S. if they don’t marry by the end of the year.
Same-sex marriage is not legal in most countries – there are only 26 where same-sex couples can marry. In at least 73 countries same-sex sex is illegal. And in eight to 14 countries same-sex sex can be punishable by death.
Should a same-sex couple from, say, for example, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, or Egypt marry in the U.S., upon returning home they could be arrested.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power took to Twitter to express outrage.
Like many Trump administration policy changes, this move reverses a 2009 Obama-era policy. That policy was made by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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