Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Bad Boys?


Are these two people bad men because they are gay, or great men because they are raising two wonderful kids that no one else seemed to want to adopt?

Slice:

Washington -- Olivier De Wulf is from Belgium. Steve Boullianne is from Los Angeles. Thirteen years ago they met, and now they live in San Francisco with their two adopted boys, Laurent, 5, and Reece, 4.

If they were straight, they could marry, and De Wulf would be granted U.S. citizenship. If they lived in Belgium, they could get married, and Boullianne could become a Belgian citizen.

But their two boys could not stay with them for more than 90 days because of a quirk in Belgian law designed to prevent mass immigration from the former colony of the Congo. Even California's liberal domestic partnership law is of no help when it comes to federal immigration law.

That leaves them with a dilemma. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., introduced the latest version of a bill Tuesday to equalize immigration rights for gay and lesbian couples, the Uniting American Families Act.

Nadler acknowledges that it has little chance of passage, but he hopes to build support for the idea.

"A lot of people believe that because domestic partnership exists in California, bi-national couples can stay in California, and it's simply not true," De Wulf said Tuesday. "They think this is already solved, and it is not. "


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Why can't it be as simple as in...it's all about the love....

SheaNC said...

Actually, a traditional marriage would probably be an arranged one where neither party might have a say in it, and certainly not the woman, who would be treated as chattel. And, she might share her lot with her spouse's other wives. Tradition can be an ugly thing.