Secretary of State Clinton will soon announce that benefits—including paid travel to and from overseas posts and emergency travel to visit ill or injured partners—which are already available to the spouses of foreign US diplomats, will be extended to all domestic partners of diplomats, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Benefits will also include children of a domestic partnership when appropriate.

The state department is exercising its right to update regulations in order to make these changes. The Bush administration had resisted recognizing the spouses of homosexual diplomats.

The issue achieved prominence in 2007 when a respected ambassador, Michael Guest, resigned in protest after 26 years in the Foreign Service. The rules and regulations, he argued, gave same-sex partners fewer benefits than family pets. Guest said he was forced to choose “between obligations to my partner, who is my family, and service to my country,” which he called “a shame for this institution and our country.”

These inequities are unfair and must end,” Clinton writes in the memo. “At bottom, the department will provide these benefits for both opposite-sex and same-sex domestic partners because it is the right thing to do.”

Yes. Thank you. It is the right thing to do.

Popularity: 1% [?]