Fresh Loaf

How backwards is U.S. immigration policy towards same-sex relationships?

Journalist and blogger Glenn Greenwald has an answer:

And the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from extending any benefits (including immigration rights) to same-sex couples means that we put our gay citizens whose partners are foreign nationals in the excruciating predicament of being forced either to live apart from their life partner or live outside of their own country. That is reprehensible.

Most civilized countries, even those that don’t yet recognize same-sex marriage, refuse to put their citizens in that situation. Brazil was a military dictatorship until 1985. It has the largest Catholic population of any country in the world. And yet I’m able to obtain from the Brazilian government a permanent visa because my Brazilian partner’s government recognizes our relationship for immigration purposes, while the government of my supposedly “free,” liberty-loving country enacted a law explicitly barring such recognition.

Other than make people miserable, what has the U.S’s anti-gay crusade accomplished? I’m straight and am soon getting married. How does legal discrimination against gay people in any way “defend” my pending marriage?

(Hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan, who, like Greenwald and this week’s CL cover story subject Michael Alvear, is being dicked over by gay-baiting politicians and the voters who support them.)

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This week’s CL cover story profiles Michael Alvear. The Atlanta sex and relationship guru’s career has taken off, while his love life life hit a brick wall built by the government-sanctioned discrimination.

I was introduced to Alvear’s work six or seven years ago when I found one of his op-ed pieces in Southern Voice. I was a big fan and picked up the paper every week looking for his work.

Sadly, I can’t find any of his Southern Voice columns online. However, while rummaging online I did find a couple of Alvear-related nuggets worth sharing.

Here’s a commentary he wrote and read for NPR’s All Things Considered in 2003 about how the South’s culture of politeness and indirectness contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS.

And here’s my favorite online Alvear knick-knack — a clip of him on The Greg Behrendt Show last year criticizing the studio audience for applauding a 23-year-old woman’s virginity.

“Does that mean women who have had sex don’t deserve applause?” he asks.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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