Christian Clarity Review

excerpted from:THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE / No legal status puts gay couples in limbo

Mel Terry and his partner have been together 28 years, but the federal government could split them up any day.

Terry’s partner is not in the country legally and because the San Francisco couple are gay, immigration benefits that allow heterosexuals to bring current or future spouses into the country are not available to them.

Terry’s partner, who would not give his name for the record because he fears deportation, is HIV-positive and faces a government ban on HIV-positive people entering the United States. He applied once for residency — and followed the advice of a member of Congress in listing his HIV status, he said — but was rejected.

“Everything went through and they said, ‘Get out immediately,’ ” said Terry’s partner, who attended a forum on immigration for bi-national same-sex couples in the Mission District last week.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 36,000 bi-national same-gender couples in the country, not including couples not living together or those who hid their status from census takers. Bi-national couples are those where one partner is a citizen or permanent resident and the other is a citizen of another country.

Their presence in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights movement is growing.

Last month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality, an immigration advocacy organization for gays and lesbians, released a report on the problems caused by immigration laws’ not recognizing same-sex couples. In Congress, more than 100 lawmakers are sponsors of the Uniting American Families Act, a bill that would give same-gender couples the same immigration rights as heterosexual couples.

The 181-page Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality report is based on interviews with 35 binational same-gender couples. The couples describe an existence where decisions on things such as housing and family are made under a cloud of uncertainty over how long the couple can remain together.

“The really striking thing for me is the degree of financial and emotional stress this causes for people,” said Scott Long, co-author of the report and director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.

Long has a partner of 11 years who lives in Romania and has yet to get a visa to enter the United States.

The summary of the report recommends passing the Uniting American Families Act in Congress to “address an egregious inequality. It would protect dedicated families and their children. It would prevent the drain of talented people to other countries. Its passage is urgent.”

The bill, written by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., would replace “spouse” with “permanent partner” in the Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs immigration procedures. To qualify as a permanent partner, one would have to be at least 18 years old in an intimate and lifelong commitment with a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. The couple would have to be financially interdependent and neither partner could be married to or in a permanent partnership with someone else. Same-sex couples would face the same scrutiny as heterosexuals.

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Ban on the importation of carriers of a deadly disease that is sexually transmitted by those who are sexual deviants? TERRIBLE! cries anti-Christ. Not pay for thier medicine and not want any collateral disease infections they produce on health care workers? TERRIBLE! cries anti-Christ. Not turn a blind eye to foregn intelligence services use of “bi-national’ homosexual ‘couples’?! TERRIBLE! DISCRIMINATORY! cries anti-Christ.

The bill would not only give status to what does not exist (homosexual “lifelong commitments”) but would open floodgates of normal couples who in fornication and adultry think they met their soul mate on a vacation, once the ‘commitee’ suddenly there is such a thing as divorce going on in the ‘hetero’ community and so must extend such a ‘possibility’ to the ‘homo’ community. There is no bizarrely wicked length that anti-Christ will not go to kill, maim and introduce deadly disease to destroy a moral people.

Romans 1:19-32 Because what is known of God is manifest among them, for God has manifested it to them, –for from the world’s creation the invisible things of him are perceived, being apprehended by the mind through the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity, –so as to render them inexcusable. Because, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but fell into folly in their thoughts, and their heart without understanding was darkened: professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and quadrupeds and reptiles. Wherefore God gave them up also in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, to dishonour their bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into falsehood, and honoured and served the creature more than him who had created it , who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile lusts; for both their females changed the natural use into that contrary to nature; and in like manner the males also, leaving the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their lust towards one another; males with males working shame, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was fit. And according as they did not think good to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind to practise unseemly things; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil dispositions; whisperers, back-biters, hateful to God, insolent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, void of understanding, faithless, without natural affection, unmerciful; who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that they who do such things are worthy of death, not only practise them, but have fellow delight in those who do them .

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen