The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2021

26 JULY-AUGUST 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL By the turn of the millennium, conditions for LGBTQ employees had clearly improved. GAO Report of 2020 Two generations have passed since the Service was described as a “walled-in barony populated by smug white males.” A GAO report in 2020, covering the period 2002 to 2018, showed uneven progress. According to the GAO: • Over that period, the proportion of racial and ethnic minorities in the Service rose from 17 percent to 24 percent. In the Senior Foreign Service, minorities were 13 percent in 2002 and 14 percent in 2018. By contrast, in 2018 minorities were 21 percent of the entire Senior Executive Service. • The proportion of women in the Foreign Service rose from 33 percent to 35 percent, and in the Senior Foreign Service from 25 percent to 32 percent. Women were 35 percent of the entire Senior Executive Service. • Promotion rates for minorities were the same as for whites (except for promotion to FS-3, where the rate was higher for whites). Promotion rates were higher for women than for men. Attrition rates for reasons other than retirement or death were slightly lower for minorities than for whites, and equal for men and women. • Racial and ethnic minorities in 2018 were roughly the same percentage of the Foreign Service as of all Americans classified by the Census Bureau as “professional workers” or “officials and managers.” Once again, employment trends in the Foreign Ser- vice were in line with trends in American society as a whole. LGBTQ Changes in American social values led to opening the Foreign Service to women and racial and ethnic minorities—but only after lawsuits and court orders forced the government to act. Changes in America’s social values were also the starting point for acceptance of employees regardless of their sexual orienta- tion or gender identification. In this case, however, the depart- ment’s leadership was sympathetic to the cause, as were most members of the Foreign Service. Judicial intervention proved unnecessary. As many commentators have observed, change in this area was relatively rapid. In the 1950s, generally accepted social values were virulently hostile to homosexuality, which was widely denounced as deviant, perverse and an offense against God. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign to root out “subversives” stirred and elevated emotions that others exploited to launch a purge of suspected homosexuals. Their contention, rarely challenged, was that gays were vulnerable to blackmail and were therefore a security risk. “The constant pairing of ‘Communists and queers,’” wrote David Johnson in his book The Lavender Scare , “led many to see them as indis- tinguishable threats.” In the 1950s and into the 1960s, State fired many hundreds of men suspected of being gay. Uncounted others quietly resigned rather than engage in a long and costly fight with an uncertain outcome and a high risk of exposure. Even into the 1980s, gay men and women at the State Department were routinely denied security clearances. The FSJ spotlights diversity issues. Shown here, covers from May 2013, June 2015 and October 2020.