I've thought of an interesting side note here. Same-sex couples who have children together abroad, where one parent is a U.S. citizen, struggled during the Trump administration to have the State Department recognize the U.S. citizenship of their children.
Same-sex couples in the U.S. often have both their names listed on the birth certificate at the hospital at birth. This obviates the need for formal adoption, and it merely mirrors what straight couples do in affirming their parenthood without submitting genetic evidence.
This happens abroad too, in nations like Canada, for example. But, during the Trump administration, the State Department would not recognize those "foreign" birth certificates as proof of citizenship for the baby. They demanded genetic proof of parentage, though they had no law or policy on their side.
Many times, couples who moved to or returned to the U.S. with their child found their child at risk of deportation. In some cases, deportation proceedings were actually initiated.
Family Equality and other LGBTQ advocacy groups filed many federal legal challenges, and the State Department lost case after case. Time and again, judges noted that the State Department had no valid legal arguments, ordering the State Department to stop discriminating against same-sex couples.
But they kept appealing, apparently intent on forcing gay couples to choose between living in the U.S. and living with their infant or toddler.
The State Department didn't stop fighting until Trump left office. Then they quietly dropped all their appeals.
I asked myself once what the administration was fighting for. I mean, look at it this way. We're talking about wealthy people, frankly. Surrogacy, IVF, etc are very expensive. A gay American who marries a Canadian and has a child with them is likely to be a professional with a hefty income and all the respectability that goes along with that.
Their baby is highly unlikely to be any sort of national security threat. What was the Trump administration worried about? Armies of upper-middle-class toddlers conspiring together in their super-expensive daycare? Perhaps the State Department worried they might smuggle explosives in their milk bottles?
The mind boggles.
What really was going on of course, was that conservatives were continuing their focus on reserving practical benefits of marriage for straight people only.
