BY MICHAEL K. LAVERS
Washington Blade
The Washington Blade has learned the Transportation Security Administration will allow same-sex couples to undergo pre-flight security screenings together in response to two recent incidents with American Airlines personnel at a Colombian airport.
Hunter Carter, a prominent same-sex marriage advocate in Latin America who said American Airlines personnel at the airport in the Colombian city of Medellín separated him and his husband, César Zapata, as they tried to check into their Miami-bound flight on Jan. 18, received an e-mail from Alec Bramlett, senior litigation attorney for the airline, on Wednesday afternoon.
“TSA has communicated to our Corporate Security folks that they are working on a technical change to its directive, and that pending that change, we can immediately begin screening same-sex spouses together,” wrote Bramlett in the e-mail the Blade obtained from Carter. “We are working on communicating this change in procedures to our stations ASAP.”
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Whenever I go through the airport security with my wife, we are separated. Each passenger goes through the check individually. So this article looks to me that same sex couples claim more rights than opposed sex couples. It will be clearly a discrimination, if the same sex couples get privileges that other don’t have.
This simply isn’t true, sir. According to a TSA spokesman “TSA is working to make clear any confusion in language included in the Aircraft Operator Standard Security Program document. TSA policy is for every attempt to be made to accommodate all families traveling together.” Travelers other than husbands and wives (and parents and their children younger than 13) are screened individually for international flights under TSA rules. Same-sex couples are simply seeking to be treated equally under the policy, allowing “husbands and husbands” or “wives and wives” to be screened together.