The Federal Government is far behind the private sector in ending workplace discrimination against gay and lesbian employees. Read US Ambassador Michael Guest insights.
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By Ambassador Michael Guest
Ambassador Michael Guest served as a Department of State Foreign Service Officer from 1981 through 2007.
During that time, he excelled in a range of senior-level positions, including Ambassador to Romania, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department, and Dean of the Leadership and Management School.
Across his career, Ambassador Guest received numerous distinguished service awards, including for trade promotion, international child welfare support, and constructive senior-level dissent. In 2003 he received a Leadership Award from NGLTF.
Ambassador Guest ended his career in November 2007 due to the Department's unequal treatment of gay and lesbian employees.
He now works with the LGBT Foreign Policy Project, which aims to improve the U.S. Government's attention to LGBT problems in other countries.
Ambassador Michael Guest resides with his partner of 12 years, Alexander Nevarez, in Washington, DC.
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How can it be that, in 2008, the United States Government still actively practices workplace discrimination against gay and lesbian employees?
Sure, federal workplace discrimination is below-the-radar. Sexual orientation isn't questioned during the hiring process, for example, nor do government regulations allow sexual orientation to be considered explicitly in the competition for promotions or job assignments.
But unlike spouses, partners of gay and lesbian employees aren't covered by federal employee health care, group life insurance, and long-term care plans. Employees can't take medical and emergency leave to care for a partner who is sick or dying. And partners, unlike spouses, aren't eligible to participate in employees' retirement plans.
In other words, the employment packages offered to gay and lesbian federal employees fall vastly short of the packages their straight colleagues, who perform identical work, receive. And workplace discrepancies are even sharper in federal agencies such as the State Department, where I once worked. Although State requires its Foreign Service employees to serve abroad at regular intervals, partners' travel and relocation expenses aren't covered. Partners aren't covered by diplomatic immunity, as spouses are, nor are they provided the language, area studies and effectiveness training that spouses receive. Medical care and evacuation similarly isn't provided. And if a country's security situation requires that embassy families be evacuated, partners are on their own.
The simple truth is that our government actively practices and sanctions unfair treatment of our families. And in so doing, our government discourages gay and lesbian employees from service to their country - thus making the federal government less representative of the American people than should be the case.
BATTLE ON CAPITOL HILL
Legislation to end discriminatory government employment practices has been introduced repeatedly over the past decade, but nothing has yet come of it. Will 2008 see a different result? The current version of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act (DPBO) - introduced December 19, 2007 - has garnered a large number of sponsors, almost all of them Democrat. Hopefully the bill will receive hearings this spring, in time for a vote to put "compassionate conservatives" on record either for or against fairness, equitable treatment, and support for our families.
Many DPBO supporters argue that the federal government must do more to attract and retain top-caliber talent. They are, of course, right. The federal government is far behind the private sector in acknowledging that gay and straight employees should be treated equally. According to the Human Rights Campaign's latest data, health benefits are now offered by well over half of Fortune 500 companies; thousands of smaller private sector companies follow that same best practice and others. With a wave of baby boom-generation employees expected to retire from federal service in the coming years, the time for action is now.
The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act would of course chip away at the number of uninsured citizens in our country - a major concern featuring in this year's presidential race. In doing so, it too would reduce the financial strain on uncovered families, for whom separate health care plans can be a major, even unaffordable cost.
But to me, the most important argument in favor of DPBO is simple: it's just the right thing to do. Fair-minded Americans understand that employees should be entitled to equal pay for equal work. By excluding benefits from the employment packages of gay Americans, the federal government denies this important workplace principle, and undercuts America's historical claim to stand for equal treatment of all citizens.
SHADOW-BOXING BY OPPONENTS
Opponents charge that the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act represents back-door approval of gay marriage, and that extension of these benefits to same-sex partners in any event would be too costly. But these arguments are mere shadow-boxing. DPBO actually represents a straightforward recognition that marriage shouldn't be the basis on which family protections and benefits are granted, especially when gay and lesbian employees aren't allowed to marry. As to cost, only a small proportion of federal employees have domestic partners, and many of those are covered already by their employers' private sector health plans. Indeed, when this legislation was last introduced, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would add less than one half of 1% to the total cost of the federal benefits program.
It's time for Congress to approve, and the President to sign, this fair-minded legislation. Doing so is important not only to our families, but to respect for the principles of equality, justice and respect for diversity to which America long has laid claim.
