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03 Jun 2008 07:58 am

The Gay Diaspora, Ctd

I make no apology for highlighting the plight of bi-national gay couples forced to pick between their spouse and their country. Marriage in Massachusetts and California doesn't help if it is not recognized by the federal government:

Thanks for posting that mother's insightful comments about our current gay marriage policy's lack of attention to the issue of gay citizens who are partnered with persons from other countries.

It's a painfully pertinent topic for me, alas.  My partner, Ariel, is currently packing his bags.  We met together in Argentina about three years ago, lived together for a year-and-a-half, and then separated as I had to return to the US to be with my family.  Now, after a year-and-a-half apart, he has come to visit me here, and we've spent two weeks together.  I can't tell you how wonderful it's been--to be honest, I'm surprised myself: I told him two days ago that if I could I would marry him, that I am really ready to spend my life with him--that I want him here around me, forever.  And I meant it--which was something that I think was, at the time, almost a little unexpected for me!

But of course that possibility is a long way off and extremely complicated.  If gay marriage were legal--federally legal, grounded in the constitution, in the same way heterosexual marraige is--then I would marry him in a heartbeat and, though the difficulties facing any newly married couple are not insignificant, I would gladly confront them.  Things being what they are, though, I don't know: I'm currently enrolled in a PhD program here in the States that is really important to me, and have a family situation that precludes my being able to move to Argentina.  And the possibility of having my partner here illegally is so daunting that I wouldn't really consider it: it's hard enough to ask him to leave his home, but I know that to be illegal in America is terrible.

I like to think that love conquers all and, in our case, I hope that it will.  But the practical difficulties of having a relationship of this sort in the contemporary US are really such that they might threaten with keeping us apart.  God, I wish I had something more profound to say: but this is just bullshit, and it sucks, it really sucks.

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