A Historical Perspective On Gay Federal Employees From a Commenter

From the always-thoughtful William R. Cumming, some thoughts on his experiences with gay federal employees through the years, and a concern that minority employees stick together and recommend each other for jobs in a kind of reverse discrimination:

A moving reference to those who have died that the OPM Director once and still loves. Yet having worked in several different agencies I can tell you some personal history that may make you draw your own conclusions. Recruited by IRS for what now would be considered a Presidential Intern position--then called Management Intern and qualifying in part on the old FSEE I joined others in July 1967 for what was to be a years program. Having already received a draft notice knew full well would be reporting for active duty at some point. But thankfully IRS did not discriminate against me because of that notice. Needless to say that would have been illegal. In my class was a brilliant young CPA who always carried a black briefcase. Given our class and IRS no one thought about that briefcase much. Then over 18 months later when in the Federal Republic of Gernmany I received an odd phone call from a senior IRS official. Did I know XX was gay and were there others I knew about? It turns out that xx had committed suicide and his briefcase was recovered. Referred to as incriminating evidence by the Senior IRS official. I said I did not know that XX was gay nor anything about the briefcase. I did ask the official something like so what if he is gay? He told me official IRS policy was to fire anyone openly gay and this was also Treasury policy. At the time I had discovered two of my best sargents were gay and to avoid the unit from going off status did not do anything except to warn them that if someone else discovered this fact it would be a problem for them (and of course for me). Nothing happened and the unit stayed on status and both received by commendendation. Later in my career I went to FEMA. It turned out by events that FEMA was a gay/lesbian friendly agency except in the matter of security clearances. When an openly gay employee was required to get a clearance he was asked if he was gay and stated yes. Then he was asked if he knew of others. Most of those he named were in my Office of the General Counsel. Not surprisingly all terrific employees. This led to a Congressional hearing and a blue ribbon panel. Report available from Steve Aftergood's National Security Archive (FAS). Okay a post script what I did not know at the time when I recruited one employee/lawyer at the time who was gay but not openly gay. I asked another gay lawyer (he was not openly gay at the time) for a recommendation for a recruit. I respected his judgement and I did in fact recruit his recommended person. What I was later told and this may be inaccurate is that in my time in FEMA when asked for recommendations for recruits, GAYS and LESBIANS always recommend one of their own. I find this to be discrimnatory but not all are OUT. So I leave to a new generation in civil service and OPM to fathom out this conundrum. To my knowledge all the gay and lesbians I knew in FEMA were wonderful civil servants and therefore clearly a huge loss if somehow discrimination against them. My Army experience says that in a highly technical unit with need for the best of the best it happened that my best were gay. So I leave to others to draw their own conclusions. If it was in my power I would end discrimination of all kinds in the Civil Service.

Some of you have complained about why I highlighted a long excerpt from Berry's speech on the blog. I chose it for two reasons. First, his remarks were the single most detailed and pointed remarks by an Obama administration official on gay rights issues, and therefore significant and newsworthy. Second, I thought the speech was indicative of a significant change in style and level of passion at the Office of Personnel Management, and therefore also worth excerpting in some more detail. Policies that affect gay and lesbian federal employees are likely to stay in the news for a while. I'm curious to see what the impact of those rules has been in the past. Keep the stories coming, please.