The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

recognized and accommodated is left entirely to the discretion of post management.” The Journal received a number of e-mails telling of posts that went beyond the call of duty to make life as easy as possible for the FS employee and the MOH. FSO Andy Ball, for example, says that at Embassy Manila, his partner “is treated like an Eligible Family Member in nearly every respect. ... He is invited to all CLO events and, most importantly, is eligible to work at the embassy.” Another FSO says that when stationed recently in South Africa, the embassy’s consular section “simply took care of” getting his same-sex partner residency permits and travel visas. Ted Osius, a single FSO in Bangkok, had his unmarried sister and 10-month-old nephew living with him. “For a time, ours was an unusual family,” he wrote, “and yet the embassy in Bangkok bent over backwards (within the rules) to welcome us.” Even a Housing Board member at a European post who is not that pleased about helping out unmarried or gay couples says, “I may hold my nose, but not when I am speaking or acting as a government offi- cial.” So he tries to carry out his duties “without par- tiality or prejudice.” But the Journal also received quite a few accounts of how the State Department or a particular post made life miserable for MOHs, especially when gay partners were involved. These complaints range from inability to get an ID badge or building pass for the M E M B E R S O F H O U S E H O L D 22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 4 D oes the Defense of Marriage Act prohibit the Foreign Service from giving additional privileges to same-sex partners? A number of Foreign Service sources who supplied information for this arti- cle said that they believed the act would bar such accommodation. But, surprisingly, all those sources — even the designated spokesperson for HR — stated they had not read the Defense of Marriage Act. The Defense of Marriage Act was passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by President Clinton. It is one page long and is remarkably easy to understand. Regarding the federal government, it says the United States and its agencies must apply the words “mar- riage” and “spouse” only to “a legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife.” It would appear that the act poses no obstacle to increased accommodations to members of households — even same-sex partners — as long as the words “marriage” and “spouse” are not used to describe these persons. There is one diplomatic sphere in which the Defense of Marriage Act holds sway, however. According to the State Department Office of Protocol, because of that law, the United States does not extend any privileges and immuni- ties to same-sex partners of visiting diplomats. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations — to which the United States is a party — also has some- thing to say about diplomatic families, but the key con- cern there is “privileges and immunities” such as immunity from arrest and prosecution. In addition, Eileen Denza, probably the leading commentator on the Vienna Convention, says that in practice there are few formal definitions of what constitutes “the mem- bers of the family of a diplomatic agent forming part of his household.” “Each receiving state applies its own rules ... and unusual cases are settled in negotiation,” she says. Beyond that, in Diplomatic Law: A Commentary on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (Clarendon Press, 1998), Denza says: “There are also signs that in many capitals an unmarried partner is accepted as a ‘spouse’ in the context of defining the diplomat’s family, though this does not seem to be widely acknowledged. The United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1997 for the first time announced that a British ambassador would be accom- panied on his forthcoming posting by a partner who was not his wife, and added that the United Kingdom might request diplomatic immunity for her.” — Bob Guldin Defense of Marriage?