11:06 am
The Other Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
When I was at the State Department, I had the opportunity to work closely with a terrific group of foreign service officers who were memberw of Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, who were fighting to get recognition for same sex spouses.
Although benefits were a big part of what they were fighting for, an equally important issue was how their spouses were treated overseas. The reality is that unlike a number of European countries, American gay and lesbian spouses do not enjoy the same status overseas as their heterosexual colleagues. That means, among other things, that they do not have the rights, privileges, and protection that other spouses do. As former Ambassador Michael Guest put it back in 2007 when he resigned from the foreign service over the treatment of his partner, the foreign service (and by extension the U.S. Government) forced him to choose
between obligations to my partner, who is my family, and service to my country,” which he called “a shame for this institution and our country.
Back when I was in the Clinton Administration, gay spouses did not have even the most basic rights and privileges. To its credit, the Bush Administration changed some of the rules — permitting partners/spouses to attend security and other introductory seminars — but not much more.
Yesterday, GLIFAA released to the press a copy of a letter sent last week to incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton:
We, the undersigned and representing the diversity of the foreign affairs agencies. . .are troubled that our families are not all treated equally and with the same respect. We are concerned that access to the federal health care insurance program is denied to same-sex partners of employees serving in Third World countries with substandard medical care.
We question the logic of leaving same-sex partners to fend for themselves during an emergency evacuation of a high danger post. We are embarrassed when the Department will reimburse a variety of moving expenses, including the cost of transporting a pet, when an employee is assigned overseas, but will not do the same for a same-sex partner.
We are saddened that individual and community safety are put at risk because full language instruction is not available to same-sex partners. We are uncomfortable that same-sex partners receive less compensation and fewer benefits for performing exactly the same job inside the mission as an opposite-sex spouse, that is, when same-sex partners are given a chance to work.
An order from your office designating same-sex partners as Eligible Family Members (EFMs) could remedy many of the inequalities that these families face. Other remedies will require coordination between the Executive and Legislative branches.
Madam Secretary, we believe that no colleague of ours is a second-class colleague, and no colleague’s family is a second-class family. Given your commitment to protecting the safety and promoting the welfare of all Foreign Service families, we ask for your full consideration of our concerns and we hope that a dialogue aimed at ending this unequal treatment can be started.
This is what I mean by the other don’t ask don’t tell. It’s not as discriminatory as what happens in the military: gays and lesbians no longer are drummed out of the foreign service as a result of their sexual orientation. But they are asked to pretend that they are not second-class citizens.
To put it another way, they’re being told “don’t tell us we’re not treating you fairly and we won’t ask why that’s a problem.”
That’s ridiculous, and shameful. As the GLIFAA letter notes, there’s a simple solution here: designate partners as Eligible Family Members, which would “give” them the rights and privileges (and protection) enjoyed by all other family members. (Of course the notion that the government has the ability to “give” fundamental human rights to people is, in itself, offensive, but we’ll set that aside for the moment.)
You want to know how ridiculous this is? If a foreign service officer is married to the love of her life, and her spouse brings into the marriage a daughter, and the foreign service officer adopts that daughter, the daughter is an Eligible Family Member, but her own birth mother is not.
During Hillary’s confirmation hearing, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) asked her about this issue:
FEINGOLD: What would you do as secretary of state to address these concerns? Will you support changes to existing personnel policy in order to ensure that LGBT staff at State and USAID receive equal benefits and support?
CLINTON: Senator, this issue was brought to my attention during the transition. I’ve asked to have more briefing on it because I think that we should take a hard look at the existing policy. As I understand it, but don’t hold me to it because I don’t have the full briefing material, but my understanding is other nations have moved to extend that partnership benefit. And we will come back to you to inform you of decisions we make going forward.
This is both good news and bad news. It’s good news because Secretary Clinton demonstrated a willingness to “take a hard look” at the issue. It’s bad news because she did not promise to change policy. That is a politicians’ caution — perhaps understandable given her husband’s experiences — but this isn’t 1992. Public attitudes about and understanding of these issues has changed significantly: although there remains no consensus on marriage, most Americans support both civil unions and partner benefits.
So why didn’t Clinton commit? I can only speculate. First, the federal bureaucracy may be hesitant to allow State to take the lead on this. I think that’s ridiculous — given the fact that one part of the government (the military) already has a separate discriminatory policy, I don’t see why another part of the government having a separate progressive policy should be a problem.
Second, some folks at State may nervous about “granting” full rights and privileges to same sex spouses because they’re afraid of how some countries — particularly the Vatican, most African states, and Muslim-majority states — may react. You could call it the Anglican church precedent: rock the boat and you create problems. That’s a fallacy, of course — it hasn’t been the case for other countries that have given same-sex spouses full rights and benefits — and it’s allowing diplomacy to mask discrimination.
Lest you think that these are a minor issues, remember this: until the Clinton Administration, one of the questions on the security clearance questionnaire was whether you had ever engaged in “homosexual activity.” Some very talented people over the years have been excluded from the foreign service or drummed out simply because they were gay. Don’t forget that the red hunts of the 1950s were also used to fire gay foreign service officers because they were viewed as somehow more “susceptible” to recruitment.
But even after that terrible practice stopped, diplomatic security found other ways to make the lives of gays and lesbians miserable. I’ll never forget a meeting I had during my time at State when a foreign service officer told how diplomatic security gave him a choice: forget about a foreign service career or out himself to his parents, who did not know he was gay. Another was actually outed to his parents by diplomatic security.
Here’s hoping that Secretary Clinton does the right thing, and does it quickly.
Then we can turn to the bigger problem in that other agency.
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