The American blogger who triggered Sullivan's rant had already relocated with his British partner to the UK, where people in same-sex domestic partnerships are considered married couples for immigration purposes.I've been in the US for a quarter of a century, have paid taxes when I was working, am married to an American and have never asked for a dime of public help. But the US - alone among developed nations - still persecutes non-Americans for having HIV and regards my civil marriage as null and void and my husband as a total stranger to me.
Britain doesn't persecute people with HIV and never has; moreover, Britain would allow my husband and I to relocate together to England at any point. I'm not sure people fully understand what it's like to build a life with someone and to do all you can to contribute to a society - and yet be vulnerable at any moment to having your family torn apart by the government. But it's a strain that eventually becomes crippling: you have no security, no stability, no guarantee that you have a future you can count on. And that affects an American citizen, my husband, as well.
Why has America become such a callous outlier on these matters? Why is the government forcing more and more able, qualified, productive and talented citizens into a diaspora to protect their families? And why, even after a big victory for Obama and a Democratic Congress, is there not the slightest chance of any progress for the foreseeable future?
Because it's about gays. And we are still, in the eyes of the federal government, sub-human.
The second post has to do with America's insane process for legal immigration, which has become so maddeningly protracted that skilled immigrants from China and India are returning to their native countries, where the economies are expanding. Experts predict that America will lose 200,000 skilled immigrants to these two countries. What we'll have left are Wal-Mart shoppers and Glenn Beck.
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