A Different Form of Gay Discrimination
Waiting for change: Thanks, Lauren Smiley, for writing this article ["Worlds Apart," Feature, 6/9]. This issue [gay binational couples] is very much unknown to the general public and even the gay community itself.
Not all binational couples are breaking the law. Some of us left the country, leaving behind our careers, friends, and families. Being forced to leave your own country just to be with the one you love is very wrong. My partner and I left the U.S. four years ago; we just wait for the law to change, and hope we can hang on for as long as it takes. Only one of us works, since only one of us is bilingual. It feels like we are serving a prison sentence, being forced to live this way. We have no friends, family, or careers here, just each other. So we wait.
InExile
Web comment
What discrimination really means: We are a binational couple who moved to Canada in 2007. After endless student and work visas, we were tired of waiting for things to change. There are many binational couples here in Toronto!
We are extremely disappointed after supporting, voting for, and donating money to our so-called fierce advocate [President Barack Obama]. I guess it's never a good time to help a group who supported you.
Luckily, we both found jobs and good friends here immediately, but that doesn't mean we don't miss family and friends back home. We will move back as soon as the law changes, and we are constantly thinking about all the couples going through this situation — including the ones in this article — and the stress, anger, and sadness.
As an established gay white male who had never been discriminated against, I have a new understanding of what discrimination really means.
Jake
Web comment
Snitch Comment of the Week
In response to a blog post about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sewing a company mission statement insignia inside his hoodie: Facebook is just another new bottle of old wine, repackaging and rebranding what has been around long before its existence.
As for all the Mark Zuckerberg hoopla talk of changing the world: Just give me a break, dude. Facebook is nothing revolutionary. The next generations will dump it just as easily and quickly as the bygone generations have embraced, then bypassed, GeoCities and MySpace when the next fad comes along. Those who spend (and waste) hours "poking" others are going to wake up one day and realize that, oops, they haven't got a life or a job to pay the bills. In time, Twitter will go down the same way Facebook will.
tiddle
Boycott Facebook: Immature geek Mark Zuckerberg is a wannabe Bill Gates with designs on a monopoly in social networking, which would result in a new Dark Ages, as Gates created with operating systems. His what's-in-it-for-me practices, trampling personal and privacy rights to position himself for riches no matter whom he hurts, are despicable, and are indicative of much worse to come. He must be stopped.
If you could go back to the early 1980s and buy Microsoft's competitors' operating systems, wouldn't you? The only way to stop Zuckerberg is to boycott Facebook by deleting your account after telling your social network to do the same, in hopes that a saner, safer, more democratic alternative will arise.
TL Winslow
Big whoop. Steve Jobs probably has Apple logos on his underwear.
Diana
