10 Ways to Fix America's State Department

Foreign Policy had an interesting piece written by retired FSO Joseph Cassidy about how to fix the State Department.

He says: "A hypothetical graph of the State Department’s influence through history would have its obvious high points — William Seward serving as Lincoln’s confidant and advisor, George Marshall rebuilding Europe after World War II, James Baker organizing a global coalition in the first Gulf War and consolidating post-Cold War Europe — but fewer of late. With the rise of large, permanent defense and intelligence bureaucracies after World War II, and the more recent increase in size and stature of the National Security Council begun under Henry Kissinger and expanded since, State’s role is ever more constrained. Its regional and thematic policy experts are often muscled out of big decisions by other parts of the executive branch.

That is a waste. State’s impressively smart, hardworking, and principled employees could be investment bankers or tech titans or big firm lawyers (and some have been). Instead, they choose public service, with its lower pay, fusty hierarchy, and often considerable danger. American diplomats abroad are busy assisting U.S. businesses and American citizens in trouble, investigating war crimes, tracking corruption and terrorist financing, and representing Washington in treaty negotiations. Meanwhile, their colleagues back at Foggy Bottom toil in an organization that is neither agile, efficient, strategic, nor particularly relevant."

You can read the whole piece here.

Change of Plans

Our UAB and HHE are on their way. My wife will be in two days. 

I will not.

Those of you who know me from the real world (and, who are we kidding, from Facebook, though to be fair, all of my Facebook friends are people I have real world ties to), know that my language test did not go well. Almost there is not what you want to hear about 43 weeks. So our transfer, including this past weekend's packout, has become maddeningly more complicated than it needed to be.

My wife and I were supposed to leave together (though on different flights because the main airline the Department uses doesn't allow parrots and the cost construct for that flight was pretty expensive, so my wife will use the regular flight). We were supposed to leave on Wednesday. This Wednesday. So we arranged our packout for this past weekend.

It was supposed to come after a week of leadership training and a few days off (read, days organizing) for me and a week off and a few days off for my wife (also for organizing). But with the test issue, that didn't happen. Instead, my week of leadership was exchanged for more time in language class, because it turns out that it takes four weeks to have your test reviewed, to pursue a language waiver, or to take enough additional language training to retest.

I am pursuing all three, in case you were curious. My plan now is to head to post on August 5, two weeks after my wife gets there (and no, this doesn't means she will unpack and set stuff up for us...she didn't unpack her shipments in Azerbaijan in the three months between her departure for post and my first visit there. Nesting is not really her thing.)

So I am still in language. No vacation for me. Meaning I couldn't help much with the packout of the UAB and HHE. Also meaning that the packout for storage and the car had to be postponed until August 3. So there has been much more stress than there should have been. I feel far less on top of this PCS than I have previous ones (though the movers were impressed with my labeling system...stickers on everything for UAB, HHE and storage since there wouldn't be two of there to organize and then supervise).

So our UAB and HHE are on their way to Kosovo, and my wife will begin her journey with one of our cats in two days. I have two more weeks in language and I retest on July 31. It is possible that either the waiver or a positive review of the test will come through by then (because I actually felt like I did better than my score on the test, but that is another story...), but it is already too late to change anything. So even if I get the waiver or find I passed at least one part of my test, I will still retest in the other part and leave on the 5th (Me, the dog, one of the cats, and the parrot. Fun.).

And if you are the religious sort, I wouldn't mind any prayers or positive energy you want to send my way. I am already carrying around a four-leaf clover my mother found in West Virginia. Can't hurt, right?

Greg Delawie Confirmed as Ambassador to Kosovo

In all the excitement over the Supreme Court decision, I forgot to mention that the Senate confirmed our new Ambassador to Kosovo, Career Foreign Service Officer Greg Delawie.

I talked about him a bit here. But the short version is I hear great things about him and am looking forward to working for him in Kosovo. He will be sworn in this Friday and is expected in Kosovo next month.

He has his own twitter account, by the way. I encourage you to follow him at @AmbDelawie if you are interested in what is going on in Kosovo and our embassy there.

Confirmed at the same time was Julieta Valls Noyes as Ambassador to Croatia. Julieta is currently Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, but I knew her when she was in charge of the Operations Center. I was working on INR Watch at the time, and I watched her support her people in a way they hadn't been supported before. Morale improved considerably under her direction, and many of the ways I try to manage my staff come from watching her. Her embassy is incredibly lucky to have her.

Feel Free to Unfriend Me

Exactly two years ago today!

I am ecstatic about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision making marriage equality the law of the land.

If you disagree, if you don't think I should have the right to have my marriage recognized nationwide, please if we are friends on Facebook or in life, feel free to unfriend me.

But before you do, I ask you to consider how you would feel if your spouse was hospitalized and weren't allowed in the room? I don't have to imagine. I have experienced it.

How would you feel if your spouse died, and you weren't allowed to bury him or her because you were a legal stranger and the law required immediate family to claim the body, even if that person was someone your spouse hated? What if you weren't allowed at the funeral? I have friends who experienced this after 20 or more years together.

How would you feel if you lost your home because your spouse died and you had to pay inheritance tax on "their half" of your home. It has happened to many gay people.

Civil marriage brings some 1,300 rights and responsibilities. Wills don't cover it. And some states could ignore even wills. And medical powers of attorney. It happened, a lot.

And hopefully it won't any more.

So maybe you still have religious beliefs that oppose marriage equality. Fine. But you don't get the right to impose those beliefs on others. Because you know what? My church believes in marriage equality. We were married in the church.

Think marriage is a Judeo-Christian ideal? Then why can atheists marry?

Think it is for procreation? Then why can the elderly and the infertile marry?

They can, because just as was determined in Loving v Virginia in 1967, marriage is about love, and it is a civil right.

And before you worry that this means your church will be required to marry gay people, it won't. A Catholic priest is not forced to marry non-Catholics. A rabbi is not forced to marry Christians. In fact, when we got married in our church, our pastor had just refused to marry a couple because they did not want to go through the required premarital counseling. Churches will still get to decide what is right for them, Just not for everyone else.

So please celebrate with me, because for the first time, I feel like a full citizen. I feel like the country that I serve, that I have kept faith with, has finally kept faith with me.

And I want to close with this, Justice Kennedy's eloquent final paragraph in the 5-4 ruling:

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be con- demned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

U.S. Embassies Flying Rainbow Flag for Pride

I am glad to see all the ways the Department and our embassies around the globe are celebrating Pride Month. I was especially happy to see our embassy in Tallinn raise the flag again, as I know many embassies hesitate to fly it (does the FAM allow it or not...our conclusion was yes, just not about the American flag. I am good with that.)

Of course, the State Department had a Pride event:

LGBTI+ Pride at State: Remarks by Deputy Secretary Higginbottom
Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom delivers remarks at the Department of State’s "Pride at State" event.
Posted by U.S. Department of State on Friday, June 5, 2015

You can check out articles on it on the Department's blog as well as at The Advocate and the Washington Blade.

Here is a few pieces on some of the ways embassies are marking the month.

Obama uses embassies to push for LGBT rights abroad

Gay pride flag hoisted above US embassy in Israel

Plus a nice FB cover photo from AFSA, our employee association

Should I Stay or Should I Go

First, a belated Happy Pride, y'all.

It may be the curse of being in language training (ONE of the curses of being in language training?), that I just don't find myself writing here much. There isn't a whole lot to say about studying language: it is hard, testing sucks, hitting walls hurts. Rinse, repeat.

And so I have found myself not writing, even when there were things I could post...as I type I have at least three webpages up on events I should have covered.

So maybe I am bored. Or lazy. Or bored and lazy.

And I think about just not blogging anymore. Not taking the page offline, but just leaving it. So people can use the blogroll or any info they find useful in the blog.

This isn't the first time this has crossed my mind. Nine years is a long time for a blog.

But inevitably, as has happened every. single. time. I have considered quitting, I meet someone for the first time who tells me how helpful the blog was when they joined the service.

And I feel guilty (because I am a former Catholic, and are any Catholics really completely "former"?), and I stay.

And so it happened again this weekend, at Pride.

And so I am back. I am I will try to write more. And I will hope that I have something interesting and useful to say, especially once I get to Kosovo next month.

Or sooner, depending on SCOTUS.

LGBT Envoy Berry on Latin America

The Washington Blade had a nice piece on State's Special Envoy for LGBT rights Randy Berry and his comments on Latin America,

Berry: Latin America at ‘forefront’ of global LGBT rights movement

LGBT Envoy Randy Berry

There has been some nice publicity surrounding the appointment of Randy Berry as the Department of State's Special Envoy for LGBT rights around the globe.

Check out this story in the Washington Blade:

LGBT envoy backs ‘nuanced’ approach to promoting rights

and this one in Politico.

America's new LGBT envoy: His job is to promote the human rights of gays and lesbians around the world.

Diplomatic Dash

Interesting article on openly gay U.S. Ambassador to Madrid James Costos and his husband.

Diplomatic Dash: Ambassador James Costos and his partner, White House decorator Michael Smith, are zhushing 
up the U.S. Embassy in Madrid with visionary art 
and rocking parties.

Randy Berry: LGBT envoy ‘an innovation’

I meant to bring this to your attention when it came out last week.

The Blade did a nice piece on Randy Berry, the new LGBT envoy for the Department. You should go check it out:

Randy Berry: LGBT envoy ‘an innovation’

Well Done, GLIFAA!

I want to congratulate GLIFAA on taking on one of the more serious issues facing LGBT diplomats today, the issue of accreditation.

Basically, when a diplomat is assigned to a country, that country also gives a type of diplomatic immunity to the diplomat's spouse. If the country refuses, as is too often the case if the diplomat has a same-sex spouse, that spouse goes to post at his or her own peril.

GLIFAA President Selim Ariturk was interviewed on the issue for an article called Gay Diplomats Say State Department Is Failing Their Families.

And they are right.

For those diplomats who cannot get their spouses accredited to a country, they must generally either break their assignment or go to post alone. The spouse can visit, as I did when my wife was assigned to Azerbaijan, only for one month at a time, or whatever is allowed by that country's tourist visa, at which time they must leave the country with no guarantee they will be allowed back in.

Now on the one hand, that is fine. Most Foreign Service Officers do what are called "unaccompanied tours," which is where the spouse cannot join the diplomat. But you see, there are a series of boxes we all need to check in order to make Senior Foreign Service, and one of those is to do an unaccompanied tour. But it only "counts" if you do it at places specifically designated "unaccompanied." So if you are an LGBT diplomat forced to be apart from your spouse because a country won't accredit him or her, you still need to do another one to be considered for our senior ranks. And that isn't fair. The Department can and should choose to make these tours "count."

But what is more, in many countries, the Department could use a stronger hand. No, you are not trying to change that culture (though working for LGBT rights worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the administration), we could say fine, for each legal spouse of ours you refuse to accredit, we will not accredit one of yours. Reciprocity, a tried and true method for getting our people treated equally. I can't imagine that we would stand for a country denying accreditation to a spouse based on race, so we shouldn't stand for it here.

As it is, officers are having their careers harmed by an unwillingness by posts, HR or the Department to find a way to make it work. They are unable to accept jobs that would be good for their careers (don't mistake a reference to a "plum" assignment as meaning a cushy one...for example, I consider my onward assignment to Kosovo to be a plum assignment because the work will be interesting, important and good for my career advancement).

For example, the article says "In one case, a diplomat who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation told BuzzFeed News that since joining the foreign service in 2010 he has twice been all-but-promised a plum post in a country where they needed his specialized language skills only to be reassigned at the last minute because of this country’s policy toward same-sex partners. When this first happened in 2011, the diplomat said that his State Department career development officer told him, 'There aren’t a lot of places that will accredit your same-sex partner, so if you choose to continue in this relationship it will adversely affect your career.'"

Even more senior members of the service have been affected. My wife and I aren't affected by this because we are a tandem, meaning we each get diplomatic accreditation in our own right and not based on our marriage. But the Department can and should do more to help those not as fortunate as we are.

One a side note, poor Selim and GLIFAA got absolutely flamed by GLIFAA members for doing this interview. People said they should apologize to Secretary Kerry and to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Human Resources Phil Lussier because the Department of State is a great place for LGBT people to work.

They are right that is it s a great place to work for LGBT people, but make not mistake. It is a great place too work because GLIFAA pushed for equality and fairness for LGBT employees. Selim was with me when we delivered the document on Secretary Clinton's first day, a petition from our colleagues for equal treatment for LGBT employees and a list of changes Secretary Clinton could make with the stroke of a pen. That document, based on the hard work of GLIFAA, is what led to changes that have continued through the group's efforts.

So BRAVO to Selim and GLIFAA for continuing to demand more from the Department in terms of treating all its employees equally. Well done!

No, It Isn't Enough

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know I am concerned with the lack of a out lesbian or out person of color Ambassador. I discussed it most recently regarding the gathering of all the LGBT Ambassadors at the Newseum.

Or I should say, out gay white male Ambassadors, because that was what that was. And if it hadn't been for one lone FSO, I'd have had to qualify it as out gay white male political appointee ambassadors.

Turns out, I wasn't the only one who noticed.

Dr. Marcie Bianco wrote a piece on mic.com called This Photo Represents a Major Problem in the LGBT Rights Movement.

She says in the article, "White men running the show is not "progress." It's more of the same. But when its leaders better reflect the greater LGBT movement, whether they're appointed by members, nonprofit boards or the government, true equality can become attainable for everyone."

She isn't wrong, While I would not say it is "no" progress, it is certainly not enough progress. We can do better than this.

Ironically, I would not have seen this article had it not been posted on the GLIFAA Facebook page. I say ironically because it was posted by someone who was angry that she said this wasn't progress. He ranted about how it was great progress, and when my wife and I dared to object (as did many other lesbians to us privately), we were absolutely flamed over it. How dare we question the good work of these ambassadors (we weren't). How dare we look after our own self-interests (we weren't). We were merely pointing out that Dr. Bianco is right, it isn't enough.

The person who flamed us (and attacked us personally...I continue to be disappointed that those comments have been allowed to remain on the GLIFAA page), said that six of the Ambassadors had people of color for spouses. That is great, but all of the married U.S. presidents had female wives and that doesn't mean that the Presidency was attainable for a woman. Likewise, African-American men got the vote long before their wives did. I suppose their wives should have just been content with "progress" made by their community and not continued to push for rights of their own.

The fact is that racism and sexism still exist, and the picture of the six gay white male ambassadors highlights that. For contrast, I'd like to point out another photo, taken at the Chief of Mission conference recently. It is a picture of all of the female Ambassadors who attended.

It is a great picture. But I'd like to point out that there are more gay white male Ambassadors than there are women of color in this picture.

Diplopundit, in a nice piece on the number of female ambassadors, points out that 31.6%, or 116, of the ambassadors appointed by President Obama have been women. Of that, more than 70% are career appointees (meaning they are FSOs, not political appointees). That number isn't awful considering that the number of women in our senior ranks is somewhere just under 39%.

But the number of women in our senior ranks is an issue in itself. I hope time will sort that out, as women are now the majority (by a slim amount) of those entering the service, but a report I read recently said women are also more likely to leave (and not just "to have families." Perhaps the appearance of lesser upward mobility than their male counterparts plays a role in their looking elsewhere?). So who knows?

And as I have mentioned before, I know of only two out lesbians who have reached the rank of FS 01 in the service, and none have made senior Foreign Service. None.*

And that is a problem no matter how many gay white male ambassadors we have.



*I have heard rumors of some career lesbians in the senior ranks, and perhaps even ambassadors. But if they aren't out, that doesn't help.

Still Pale and Male

Notice anything missing from this picture?

This is the ad for the event that took place this week at the Newseum. It was a gathering of all the openly gay U.S. Ambassadors.

The ad says openly LGBT U.S. Ambassadors, but you might have noticed that is not what is pictured there.

Participating in the panel discussion, which was hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, the Harvey Milk Foundation and GLIFAA (formerly Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies and now LGBT+ in Foreign Affairs) were Ambassador to Australia John Berry, Ambassador to the Dominican Republic James Brewster, Ambassador to Denmark Rufus Gifford, Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Daniel Baer, Ambassador to Spain James Costos and Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius (the only career ambassador). They are gay men and they are all white. Not even one of the moderators was a lesbian or person of color, to say nothing of transgender. LBT was not present in that picture or on that stage.

None of the stories I have seen on the event (such as this one in the Washington Post and this one in the Washington Blade), which I am the first to admit is a wonderful thing and evidence of how far we have come, mentioned this absence. Which I take as evidence of how far we have to go.

Of course, it was definitely noticed in social media, where I was not the only one to notice that these representatives of the State Department are very pale and male.

And it isn't just the Ambassadors. When the Department recently appointed an LGBT envoy, which to its credit is a career FSO (as is only one of the out gay Ambassadors), it appointed another white man. I was told at the time that there just aren't any lesbians or people of color who rank highly enough to be considered. And that seems to be true. I can find no lesbian or out person of color who has made it to the ranks of Senior Foreign Service.

Of course, rank didn't stop the Department during Secretary Rice's tenure from appointing several men to the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) who were only FS 02s in rank (for reference, FS 02 is the Foreign Service equivalent of a Lt. Colonel. Senior Foreign Service is the equivalent of a general. The highest ranking out lesbians that I know of in the Department are FS 01s, or Colonels, higher ranking than those men who were made DASes). And those men did not return to their mid-level positions afterward. In fact, two became Ambassadors, another an Assistant Secretary.

So really, the Department could appoint a career lesbian or out person of color if it really wanted to.

But we don't even need to go there. Because it could be argued, quite rightly, that an officer should have more experience before being named to such high positions.

But what about the political appointees? Five white men. Are you really telling me the Department could not find a single out lesbian or person of color for one of these positions? Anywhere? It stretches the bounds of credibility.

I hope that someone in the Department will take notice the optics of how jarringly white that picture is, and how inappropriate it is given we strive for diversity and for a State Department that looks like America. As one person on Facebook said, this looks like the Supreme Court of the 1960s.

I hope that the Secretary really meant when he said last year during his Pride remarks that " I’m working hard to ensure that by the end of my tenure, we will have lesbian, bisexual, and transgender ambassadors in our ranks as well."

Because you might have noticed the next Presidential race has already started, 

So we don't have much time left.

Greg Delawie Nominated as Ambassador to Kosovo

So we got word yesterday that the White House has nominated Greg Delawie, the current Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Security, Technology and Implementation in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance (AVC), to serve as the next Ambassador to Kosovo. He will replace current Ambassador Tracey Ann Jacobson.

I hear GREAT things about Ambassador-designate Delawie. He is a career FSO with tons of experience and according to some friends whose opinion I trust, is a smart, broad thinker with a great sense of humor. Like me, he is part of a tandem, and people LOVE his wife as well.

According to his State Department bio, Ambassador-designate Delawie is "a senior Foreign Service officer with nearly 30 years of experience and is an expert in national security, diplomacy, and political-military affairs. From 2009 until 2012, when he assumed his duties in the AVC bureau, Mr. Delawie was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, Germany, where he served as chief operating officer of one of the United States’ largest missions abroad. Prior to Berlin, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he was the State Department’s lead on counter-piracy issues and managed programs regarding humanitarian demining, negotiation of status of forces agreements, and the State-Defense relationship. Mr. Delawie also served abroad as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia, and in various positions in Rome, Ankara, and Frankfurt. In other Washington assignments he worked on bilateral trade issues; human resources policy; aviation security; European regional affairs; and as a Watch Officer in the State Department Operations Center."

Ambassador-designate Delawie speaks at least four foreign languages, including German, Italian, Croatian, and Turkish. I hope he will come study a bit of Albanian with us as well.

I am really excited to have the opportunity to work with him when we get to Kosovo this summer. Let's hope for an easy confirmation!

Wither Diversity?

There were a number of articles (here and here for example) out this week about the Department's plans to appoint an LGBT envoy with the task of promoting LGBT rights globally. I am really excited and pleased that the Department is doing this, especially given that the anonymous official quoted in the Washington Blade said, "It’s been long in the making because the secretary insisted the envoy be a career Foreign Service officer from inside the institution, someone who is part of the fabric of the institution, a diplomat by training.”

I hoped against hope that unlike every single openly gay Ambassador, that this person would be a lesbian or a person of color.

But before I could even blog about it, buzzfeed announced that the person selected is likely to be Randy Berry.

Another white man.

Don't get me wrong. I am not anti-white men. My dad is a white man and he is one of my favorite people on the planet. And I count among my closest friends in the Department many many gay white men.

And I am certain Berry is extremely qualified and will be an excellent envoy. I don't know him, but several people whose opinions I trust say he is awesome.

But still.

The Department seems unable to find lesbians or gay people of color to select for these appointments and it is disappointing. To suggest that there are no qualified lesbians or gay people of color stretches credibility.

And let's even say, for argument's sake, that there are none at the most senior levels. I will even grant that the highest ranking lesbian I know in the Department is an 01. I think the highest ranking gay person of color I know is my rank. And I get that this appointment needs to be someone high ranking. Someone from the Senior Foreign Service.

But we seem to be in a vicious cycle here where lesbians and gay people of color are not experienced enough or high ranking enough to be considered for these appointments. So they go to white men, which means they never get experienced enough for these appointments. There has to be a better way than waiting YEARS for the possibility of a lesbian or person of color to make it to those ranks. Especially when you consider that the total number of women and people of color in the Senior Foreign Service is depressingly small and nowhere close to representative of even their percentage in the Department, much less in general society.

I don't know what the answer is. I believe in selecting the most qualified person for the job. But as my wife pointed out this morning, it is much easier to win at king of the mountain when you are already on top. That isn't a level playing field.

I think the Department needs to try harder at leveling it, at least for its own employees. Perhaps deliberately selecting some lesbians and people of color as deputies to these positions would give them the experience, and the exposure, to break through that glass ceiling.

The Palmer Case and Women in the Foreign Service

There is an interesting piece on the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training that I have been meaning to share with you on The Palmer Case and the Changing Role of Women in the Foreign Service. It reads, in part:

"There have been a number of prominent women who have served in the State Department over the past century: Francis Willis, the first female career Foreign Service Officer to become ambassador; Clare Booth Luce, a political appointee as Ambassador to Italy; Constance Ray Harvey, who was awarded the Medal of Freedom for her work during World War II, not to mention the number of women who served recently as Secretaries of State. But the road to equal opportunity for women has often been a bumpy one. The unprecedented opportunities for women which opened up during WWII closed just as dramatically after the war as the Foreign Service returned to its previous hiring practices. It was very difficult in the postwar years for women to be hired by and promoted within the Foreign Service. From 1961 to 1971, recruitment of women remained at 7% and the rate of promotion was slow.

Several incidents eventually forced the State Department to enact major changes. Several women in the late 1960s formed the Women’s Action Organization (WAO), which worked closely with the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), to push for abolishing the regulation that prevented women who married from entering or remaining in the Foreign Service.

More famous was the Alison Palmer case. Palmer had begun her career in the Foreign Service in 1959 specializing in African affairs. Several ambassadors had objected to her assignment to their embassies in Africa in the late 1960s, and during one assignment, she was expected to act as social secretary to the Ambassador’s wife. She then started an internal grievance procedure through the Department’s Equal Employment Office charging sex discrimination. In 1969 Palmer, then stationed in Vietnam, was notified that the EEO had found in her favor but refused to enter the report in her personnel file. In 1971, she then filed a sex discrimination lawsuit which she won three years later. Her victory resulted in an order from management barring all discrimination in assignments. In 1972, the State Department overturned its ban on the marriage of female diplomats. It also took steps to improve inequities in housing allowances and in the recruitment process, and issued the Declaration on Spouses, which removed wives from their husbands’ performance evaluations.

In 1976 after numerous attempts at getting higher ranking positions as a Foreign Service Officer, Palmer then filed a class action lawsuit against the State Department for discrimination in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. After several years of litigation, a 1989 court order found that the Department had discriminated against women in the written portion of the Foreign Service Officer Test. The State Department was then restricted in administering written exams that had adverse impacts on women. In 2010, Palmer (at left) decided to terminate the lawsuit as all parties agreed that the State Department had finally demonstrated compliance of the court orders by making reparations to women who were affected and modifying hiring systems."

 I have blogged previously about Palmer and this issue here. You can read the whole ADST piece here.

The Supreme Court Decision to Take On Marriage Equality

You probably saw that the Supreme Court has decided to take up again the issue of marriage equality. After some 59 rulings against bans on marriage equality, the ruling of I think the 6th circuit upholding the bans means that it is time for the court to weigh in. They expect to hear the case in April and rule by June (I feel a "cold" coming on that will keep me from going to language training that day...it is possible there will even be a lavender flu that day that takes out all the LGBT language students!)

I admit to being both thrilled and terrified.

There is a nice piece in the Washington Post today talking about the decision to take the case and what the specific questions (whether the 14th amendment requires states to allow same-sex marriage and whether it requires out of state marriages to be recognized) being asked mean for marriage equality. The article, referring to the 1967 Loving v Virginia case, which ruled against bans against interracial marriage, says in part:

"The Supreme Court ruled in that 1967 case that Virginia’s ban on marriages between people of different races violated the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” the majority argued. “To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.” Replace “racial classifications” with “sexual orientation” and the argument rationale still holds.

By the time the Loving case was decided, Virginia was one of 16 states that still outlawed interracial marriage. As for public opinion, well, the American people were overwhelmingly against such unions. A Gallup poll in 1968, a year after the Supreme Court ruling, showed 73 percent disapproval. When the justices hear arguments in late April, the conditions will be more favorable for same-sex marriage."

At the time of the Loving ruling, interracial marriage was legal in 34 states. Today, we have marriage equality in 36 states. More than 50% of the population believes marriage between two people of the same sex should be legal.

So for those who think we should wait for the right time, the time is more right now than it was for interracial marriage in 1967.

But I hope that Supreme Court will heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said "The time is always right to do what is right."

Agree to Disagree with GLIFAA

You may have seen the article today in the Washington Blade regarding the Department's considering phasing out the Same-Sex Domestic Partner Benefits program in response to the Supreme Court's Windsor ruling overturning part of the so-call Defense of Marriage Act. If not, you can read it here. You can read the first of what I fear will be many negative responses to the article here.

I know there may be two of you at this point who don't know who I am, but I will tell you that I was President of GLIFAA (formerly Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies and now LGBT+ in Foreign Affairs Agencies) when Secretary Clinton took office. On her first day in office, I, along with my vice president, hand carried the petition signed by our colleagues asking that same-sex partners be given as many of the rights as their married opposite-sex colleagues as the law allowed. My board and I drafted the document outlining the changes she could make with the stroke of a pen to improve the lives of her LGBT employees and their families. Those changes included the creation of the SSDP program that was enacted while I was in office and is what they are considering phasing out now.

And I think they should phase it out.

I am no longer on the GLIFAA board, but I am still friends, in some cases close friends, with those who are currently serving this important organization. And I have to respectfully agree to disagree with them on this issue. In fact, as GLIFAA president, I assured the Under Secretary for Management that when we had equality under U.S. law, that GLIFAA's members would want no more than to be treated the same as their opposite-sex colleagues. And that this would mean the end of the SSPD program.

I think the current board should keep that promise.

Yes, there are challenges for officers who do not wish to marry. They are the same challenges faced by our straight colleagues. There have always been those who did not wish to marry for whatever reason, and the price they paid for not making that legal commitment was that the government did not see reason to pay the many costs associated with spouses, such as plane tickets, medical evacuations, etc. Every single A-100 orientation class has had at least one officer who realized that they weren't going to get those benefits without marrying their opposite-sex partner and so did so usually before their training ended. At the time when we got the benefits of the SSDP program, it was because those benefits were not available to us even if we were legally married in one of the few states that allowed it at the time. Now they are. It was never the intention of the Department to create a "marriage light" program.

And yes, there are Fortune 500 companies that offer such benefits. But we don't work for them. We work for a budget strapped government recently placed in the hands of a fiscally conservative majority. New benefits are simply not going to happen.

And yes, I am certain there are people who are afraid for their relationship status to be know to their families. I am certain that fear is real and justified. But the danger is not in the marriage license but in the relationship itself. Aren't being allowed to live with a Foreign Service Officer, getting airfare paid by the USG,  including for R&R, and getting a diplomatic passport with an endorsement explicitly state the relationship to the diplomat even bigger red flags than a license that some foreign diplomat could decide to request a copy of?

And in fact, there are straight colleagues facing similar dangers. There are in the Department Muslims and Christians dating each other and living in real fear that their families will discover their relationship and disown them or worse. There are certainly families who still do not believe in interracial marriages. And people find a way to make those relationships work or they don't. But it is still the relationship, not the license, that causes the danger. And as a friend pointed out to me today, what might Dr. Martin Luther King Jr have done had he been faced with couples looking to marry interracially who were threatened by their families or even the KKK? Do you think he'd have advised them to pursue a separate but equal status in order to get some protections? Certainly the Lovings lives might have been easier had they just moved or opted to live together without marriage. But because of them, bans on interracial marriage were found unconstitutional. And given that the arguments in that case were very similar to those in Windsor, I credit them in no small part for helping us achieve marriage equality.

Gays and lesbians can now get married legally in 36 states. More than 70% of the country now lives in a marriage equality state. And yes, if you meet the man or woman of your dreams overseas, you may not be able to be married there. But that is exactly the type of case a fiancee visa can take care of, with the added bonus that your new husband or wife can become a US citizen.

I have spoken to many, many GLIFAA members on this issue, and with the exception of the members of the board, all but one has agreed it is time to phase out SSDP. (I was told one other person who is a friend and not on the board also wants to keep the policy, but that person has not said so to me). I do think there is a place for a limited-period DP program for LGBT and straight couples at post to allow them time to return to the U.S. and marry. But that isn't what is being argued here.

And frankly, I am concerned that GLIFAA's time, energy and political capital are being used on a losing issue when there are still real, pressing issues facing our members that need to be dealt with. Like continuing to improve things for our transgender colleagues. Like making sure that spouses can serve together at posts, and if the country they are assigned to refuses to accept the spouse as they do all other spouses, making certain that is dealt with reciprocally. Like finding a way for LGBT employees to get credit with promotion panels and for onward assignments for the "unaccompanied tours" they serve where they are forced to be apart from their spouses while straight couples are not because of the laws in that country. These are issues that affect where members of the Foreign Service can serve, which then affects their ability to advance in their careers.

And respectfully, I think it is where GLIFAA should focus its attention.

Making Resolutions

I am notoriously bad at making New Year's Resolutions. Okay, not at making them, but definitely at keeping them.

About the only resolution I ever kept was that one year for Lent, I gave up giving up things for Lent. And I nearly wavered on that!

So this year, I decided on a "To Do" list. All of the things on it need to be completed before we move to Kosovo in July,

* Clear out the garage so I can put the car there if it snows.
* Move the work table from the basement to the garage and make a work space there
* Get the gutters cleaned
* Organize the boxes in the basement into boxes for storage and HHE.
* Buy colored labels for those boxes
* Sort through the books we want to donate to the Friends of the Library.

Turns out, I am way better at "to do" lists than resolutions. In just three days, I have cleared the garage, gotten the gutters cleaned, and organized the boxes.  I am going to try to buy the labels this afternoon. I have a repair guy coming next weekend and I am going to see about getting him to help with the table (read: offer to pay him and his assistant to move it so I don't have to try to get it out of the basement with my crappy knees!)

That will just leave the books. My wife needs to go through them too, so that may take a little longer to get done. But that still means my list is nearly finished!

Are you making any reolutions/"to do" lists? What's on them?

And Happy New Year!

Wishing You The Best!

Guilt from the realization that I haven't blogged since November and not wanting to let a New Year role in without one last post prompted me to pry myself from the comfort of my recliner to come upstairs and post.

2014 has been an eventful year, as are they all of late, and I continue to feel extraordinarily lucky for all that I have and all I have been able to experience.

This year brought us to the conclusion of our three years in our beloved Estonia, And after finally getting to move into the house we bought more than a year ago and a wonderful home leave that took us as far north as Maine and as far south as Atlanta, it took us right back to Estonia to help with President Obama's visit to Tallinn. I got to thank him, personally, for supporting Marriage Equality.

Courtesy of Freedom to Marry

And this is a year that will go in the record books for Marriage Equality, The Supreme Court's refusal to hear cases where a number of Appellate Courts had ruled in favor of marriage equality meant that the number of states where you can marry the person you love blossomed to 35. Including South Carolina. SOUTH CAROLINA, y'all!

We can retire someplace warm!

I don't know what 2015 will bring. We all know I am famously bad at keeping New Year's Resolutions regardless of what I call them, so I just hope that life continues on the way it has. I hope all goes according to plan, and that we will finish Albanian language training and head off to Kosovo in July. I hope that my wife, our pets and our families continue to be healthy. I hope our work continues to be meaningful and that we get to continue to serve the country.

I also hope for continued improvement in our country. I hope 2015 brings marriage equality to the remaining 15 states. I hope our economy continues to improve and that the improvement lifts those who are suffering. I hope that lift helps heal some of the divides in our country so that people can once again remember that there are smart, dedicated, patriotic people on both sides of the political divide in this country. We all want what is best for the country. We just don't agree on how to get there. If we can remember that, it would be a huge start.

And for you, I hope that your 2015 is better than your 2014 regardless of how 2014 was for you. If you were loved, I wish you more love, and if you weren't, then I wish you love. If you were happy, I wish you more happiness, and if you were sad, I hope your sadness if finally abated.

I hope you and yours are happy, healthy, and secure in 2015.

Happy New Year! Head Uut Aastat! Gëzuar Vitin e Ri!