Members of Congress to Antigay Nations' Diplomats: Leave Your Spouse Home

Members of Congress signed a letter Monday to Secretary of State John Kerry urging the State Department to deny visas to the spouses of diplomats from countries with antigay policies.

This was in retaliation for what the lawmakers claimed was action by foreign governments to deny American diplomats who have same-sex spouses "an equal opportunity to represent the United States abroad because certain foreign governments refuse to recognize their same-sex marriages."

The letter was drafted by Rep. Eliot L. Engel and Rep. Nita M. Lowey -- both ranking members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs from New York City -- and was signed by 125 of their colleagues in the House. All but one are Democrats; the only Republican was Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.

"We cannot look the other way when an American diplomatic spouse -- any American diplomatic spouse -- is discriminated against in this way," they wrote in the letter to Kerry. "If a foreign government refuses to issue the appropriate visa to same-sex spouses, we ask that the State Department reciprocate by denying a visa to the spouse of a diplomat from that country."

According to the Washington Blade, Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom already supports a proposition of this nature. At a Pride event last month hosted by GLIFFA, the group for LGBT and staff in Foreign Affairs Agencies, Higginbottom called out antigay countries for routinely denying visas to the same-sex partners of American foreign serivce officers.

"We don't have gay spouses, we have spouses," she said, according to the Blade. "We don't have lesbian families. We have families. We refuse to accept that equal treatment by our foreign counterparts is too much to ask."