Former U.S. ambassador to Romania Michael Guest is helping to launch a new gay rights organization called the Council for Global Equality. The group, which will have its first meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month, aims to push the United States government to support LGBT rights internationally.

According to the Bay Area Reporter, the group is a collaboration between LGBT and non-LGBT groups that work on international human rights.

“Its purpose is to make the United States government and the State Department stand up for global LGBT human rights,” Guest said.

The paper writes:

During Guest’s swearing-in ceremony, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made a point to recognize Guest’s partner, Alex Nevarez. The occasion was viewed by many in the LGBT community as a turning point in how the government treated out Foreign Service employees.

Instead, Guest and Nevarez quickly came to realize that they did not have the same rights and benefits as other embassy employees because the government did not legally recognize their relationship. Yet it wasn’t until the occasion of his retirement last December that Guest publicly repudiated how the federal government mistreats its LGBT employees and their partners who are stationed overseas.

“The Foreign Service tends to be very open-minded. I never heard any colleague express a problem with my sexual orientation. It is the policies of the State Department that are unfair to us who are lesbian or gay and have partners,” said Guest.

As soon as Nevarez made the decision that he wanted to travel with Guest to the embassy in Bucharest, the couple faced numerous hardships that other ambassadors and their partners would not have. Guest was forced to pay for Nevarez’s transportation and to ship his belongings overseas.

The two were also informed that Nevarez could not be treated in the embassy’s own medical unit. Should he be treated there, Nevarez would be charged for the medical care. Nevarez would also have had to find his own way out of the country should the embassy need to be evacuated, said Guest.

“If there is political unrest or violence and the embassy is drawn down, they are on their own,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. It is very unfair. The government is putting partners at risk.”

Guest is pushing to see that such discrimination against same-sex couples stationed overseas ends should Democrat Barack Obama be elected president in November. He serves as an adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign, working on the LGBT human rights and the European policy groups.

“I am fully confident if Obama is elected, certainly he will revise these policies that are so unfair to us,” said Guest. “It should not matter if you are gay or straight. We need good people to serve.”