Some thoughts on immigration and same-sex marriage.....

Sometimes I am frustrated that issues are seen in isolation with no connection to each other at all.  What for example, do immigration laws and same-sex marriage have in common?  Most obvious is the plight of US citizens in same-sex relationships with non-American partners.  The inability to marry keeps many of these couples from staying in the United States.  Imagine the nightmare of having to either separate or travel from country to country in order to stay together.

The issues are connected in subtler ways as well.  Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts who fought vehemently against same-sex marriage and who, as a presidential candidate, took an extremely hard stance against undocumented workers, actually rose to national prominence on the backs of those very workers who entered the country illegally.  Mitt Romney's "saving" of the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 was the first of two tickets to the national stage.  An inconvenient truth for Mr. Romney: according to the mayor of Salt Lake City at the time, the Olympics owed its very existence to undocumented workers in the United States.  That's right.  The very people Romney would like to send out of the United States were greatly responsible for the event that made Romney the politician he is today.

In the 1990's, while running for a senate seat, Romney claimed that he would be better than Ted Kennedy for GLBT people. As a governor with presidential ambitions a few years later, he not only turned his back on gays and lesbians, he also launched a vicious campaign to stop equal marriage in Massachusetts.  In doing so, he became a darling of the conservative movement.  Ticket number two.

See a pattern here?

Bottom line: if a politician exploits one group such as immigrants to win an election, how can GLBT people ever trust him to look after our interests, too?  The two issues are connected.  And it is in the best interest of supporters of gay marriage to recognize this connection.  We all need to look out not only for our own interests, but also the interests of other groups seeking the right to live and love as everyone else in our country.