Relationships Unrecognized, Rights Denied

When two people fall in love and plan to live their lives together, they may need the state to safeguard their union: never more so than if they have different nationalities. United States policy is to help foreign spouses and fiancés immigrate and live with their U.S. partners. But not if that partner is of the same sex.

Binational same-sex partnerships are lesbian and gay couples where one partner is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, the other a foreign national. The 2000 U.S. Census estimated almost 40,000 such couples lived together in the United States. These families dwell in every state, make their way at every income level, are a mosaic of American diversity.

Their relationships have no recognition in federal law.

These figures do not count couples who avoid the census out of fear. They do not count couples who are forced to live apart, in different countries. They do not count couples where the U.S. partner has chosen exile, so that they can lead common lives in another, friendlier country than this one. (At least nineteen countries have acknowledged lesbian and gay relationships in immigration law and policy. The United States still refuses.)
The more than 70,000 members of such families whom the last census counted are only a part, perhaps a very small one, of the whole.

Mark Himes holds his daughter, Claire Marie, and son, John, while partner and co-parent Fabien (not his real name) takes the picture. © 2006 Private

Barbara, a U.S. citizen, is legally disabled. She has a severely disabled son, seventeen, as well as a thirteen-year-old daughter. She relies on her British partner, Susan, who lives with her. She says,

It kills me that [Susan] has no legal rights to the kids. The family would be destroyed if something happened to me…She wouldn’t even have the right to take them out of the country if she couldn’t stay here. We just want to be able to have a normal life as a family.

Mark Himes and his French partner, living in Pennsylvania, had adopted a three-year old boy, John, and were in the last stages of adopting a three-month old daughter, Claire Marie. Yet they faced the expiration of his partner’s work visa. Mark said,

We live year by year with no plans for the future. We live in a don’task, don’t-tell world.

A woman in Iowa, living with her partner from New Zealand, wrote that immigration laws

do not allow my partner to live a free life, she is in constant fear of being deported and removed from this country and her family…Together we are raising a twelve-year old son. My partner is my son’s mother also, and losing her would destroy that little boy’s life…She keeps this family together and whole. I am also a veteran of the United States Navy and have done my time and service to my country. It breaks my heart that for all I’ve done with this country it will not see the person I love who has strength to hold me up when life is bad—she cannot remain even after the commitment we have put into each other and our son’s life. I cannot imagine life without her. How could anyone live without their heart.