What a dick! https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-administration-halts-visas-unmarried-same-sex-partners-065803424--abc-news-topstories.html
Noted that one too. Being casually cruel for no frigging reason. And then their supporters act all indignant at "basket of deplorables" comment (typical HRC gaffe: if anything, frighteningly accurate). This one is a bigger deal: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/24/641706119/why-the-number-of-u-s-visas-being-granted-to-afghan-and-iraqi-allies-are-down Great. Screwing the US Armed Forces, in harm's way no less, just to be mean to some Arabs. It is inherently hard to find cooperative locals in foreign land, without morons upstairs hard at work to make it harder.
Things like this are usually more complex than they appear. I'd like to know how other countries treat unmarried domestic partners of U.S. diplomats. I also wonder whether the immunity that usually accompanies a diplomat and his household is extended to unmarried partners in other countries. Personally, I don't like the fact that there are thousands of traffic tickets issued against diplomats for disregarding their host country's laws but nothing is or can be done about it. It all has to do with reciprocity.
Don't worry too much about it. I grew up with diplomats' kids, and they said when they get those they just throw them away.
Absolute diplomatic immunity is hard to justify in my mind when consuls, who conduct the vast majority of foreign government business throughout the world, aren't immune except for acts taken in the performance of consular duties. I find it even harder to justify any immunity at all for members of the diplomat's family. Then again, I'm more than a little crotchety about such things; I'd like to expel the United Nations, root and branch, from the soil of the United States. Near as I can tell, that worthless organization serves only to lend legitimacy to vicious dictatorships. The freely chosen representatives of free peoples have no need of such expensive foolishness. Yeah, yeah, I know that won't ever wash nor should it, probably. But that chamber of absurdities, the General Assembly manages to be both pointless and powerless. I'm not a big fan of vaudeville.
In this case, it was a function of the special license plate issued by the State department to diplomatic staff. My friend drove like a maniac until eventually his father (chargé d'affaires in the Embassy of Pakistan, I think) made him drive a car that had normal Virginia plates. "The UN only represents the collective wishes of the world's governments, most of which are run by crooks, corrupt politicians, and dictators. It is about representative of the people of this world as the Supreme Soviet was representative of the will of the people unfortunate enough to live in the USSR. The UN was never intended to be a representative or democratic government. It is a body of international diplomacy in which even the worst of the worst have a voice, for the purely practical reason that those people also have guns and bombs." -- Ken Orland Just so long as the UN is never, ever, ever given the power to tax.
Returning to the Administration's action...if I understand correctly, what Trump is doing is nothing more than to treat same sex diplomatic couples exactly the same as opposite sex diplomatic couples. The visa applicants' real complaint lies, if at all, against the very governments they represent. I see no reason to afford diplomats, who are immune from our laws, greater rights than they would receive in their own countries.