Four years ago Anthony White was watching the cheesy TV extravaganza “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” and got angry.

The coordinator for Glimmigration, San Diego’s local GLBT immigration rights organization, had been in a relationship with his partner for seven years, but because his partner was not a U.S. citizen, there was no hope of their being able to obtain residency status and live together because, as a gay couple, they of course had no right to marry – yet here was a program that allowed beauty queens and jocks to marry for sport.

That, White concluded, is unfair.

Because marriage is the only form of union, apart from immediate family, recognized by the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) gay and lesbian couples in binational relationships are unable to enjoy the same citizenship and residency rights, and all the benefits that come with it, that heterosexual binational couples have. (Even when same-sex marriage is allowed in individual states, these unions will not necessarily be recognized for immigration purposes, thanks to DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage in federal law as a union between a man and a woman.) Whether they choose to or not, heterosexual couples in relationships where one is not a U.S. national have the option, at least, to marry and obtain residency status. White and his partner and more than 30,000 other binational gay couples in America have no such option.

In this week’s feature, starting on page 46, writer Abby Schwartz talks to White about Glimmigration and what the organization is doing to help couples, who have fallen in love across national borders, to do what any couple should be able to do: simply have a life together. Schwartz found several couples currently attempting to navigate their way through the maze of U.S. immigration – a notoriously bureaucratic and unfriendly agency, to say the least – and their stories are documented here.

The testimonials bring home the unfairness of this issue in a startling way. No longer is this issue about the legalese of immigration negotiations and rights – it’s about people who love each other, attempting to start families and being discriminated against in the most fundamental of ways. They are in love, visa-less, and stuck in their respective countries – or forced to choose between living with the one they love illegally, practically as a nonperson, or to live solitarily without their chosen love, in their respective countries. It is, literally, a heartbreaker.

Suddenly, a lot of things make sense.

Nondiscrimination clauses, for instance, are not just something that people at Lambda Legal, or the NGLTF (National Gay & Lesbian Task Force), or Brian Pojeles, organizer for San Diego’s Pride at Work, or Jeffrey Mittman at Equality California, or the folks at the SLDN (Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network) or Family Matters are spouting off about. Nondiscrimination is always about people’s real lives – our real lives – and our loves and our families.

We’ve said it before in these pages but we can’t say it enough, and this week’s feature brings it home again: We have to keep working – and support the many out there in our community and nationally who are already working – to gain equal rights for GLBT couples and families. This means equal rights and mandatory nondiscrimination in the workplace, in schools and colleges, in the military, in the hospital and doctors’ offices, in the courts. Everywhere.

In our world news section this week (page 37), Rex Wockner reports that Portugal has become one of a handful of nations to write gay and lesbian nondiscrimination into that country’s constitution. With a president who would quite like to do the exact opposite, we can only dream of a blanket nondiscrimination clause in our nation’s fundamental law.

In the meantime, we can pay attention to nondiscrimination bills – such as California’s AB 2900 which unifies nondiscrimination clauses in dozens of state labor laws, and the PPIA (Permanent Partners Immigration Act), a bill that would allow U.S. citizens and residents to sponsor their same-sex partners for immigration to the States. Stay aware, and stay involved.

Gavin Newsom is not going to sweep in and fix everything. Absent a constitutional amendment that writes nondiscrimination into our federal laws, we have to work for these issues one bill at a time. But work we must.