Lifting the Ban on Gays in the Civil Service: Federal Policy toward Gay and Lesbian Employees since the Cold War

Abstract

Although military's ban on lesbians and gays has generated considerable political controversy, many people remain unaware that federal government also prohibited employment of gays in civil service until 1975. This article provides a brief history of political, bureaucratic, and judicial forces involved in creation, implementation, and elimination of that prohibition. Though policy apparently stretches back to early days of Republic, its importance exploded in Cold War hysteria of 1950s, when sex in government erupted as a public policy issue that merged concerns about national security and moral purity. Under pressure from Congress, U.S. Civil Service Commission and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) developed techniques to purge lesbians and gay men from civil service. These bureaucratic efforts persisted long after political issue had died down. The courts slowly undercut government's blanket exclusion of homosexuals from federal employment, eventually demanding that bureaucracy demonstrate a rational connection between homosexual and efficiency of service. Although Civil Service Commission resisted employing homosexuals for years, it institutionalized policy change in 1975, and recent progress toward guarantees of equal treatment for gay and lesbian federal employees has occurred primarily through bureaucracy. Homosexuals Emerge as a Personnel Policy Concern The federal government has traditionally required that its employees be of good moral character, a standard that historically excluded known homosexuals. Regulations have long instructed bureaucracy to deny examinations to applicants, refuse appointments to eligibles, and remove incumbent employees from their jobs for criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct (U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1941, 37). We know of isolated dismissals for homosexuality long before Cold War. (The Interior Department fired Walt Whitman in 1865 and Post Office discharged founder of country's first homosexual political organization in 1925. See Katz, 1976). It is not clear how actively civil servants attempted to prevent employment of lesbians and gay men, however. A U.S. Senate report (1950, 10) charged that officials undoubtedly condoned employment of homosexuals ... particularly ... where perverted activities of employee were carried on in such a manner as not to create public scandal or notoriety. By 1950, however, many in Senate were impatient with the false premise that what a Government employee did outside of office on his own time, particularly if his actions did not involve his fellow employees or his work, was his own business (U.S. Senate, 1950, 10). The problem began with a list of admitted homosexuals and suspected sent by a Senate Appropriations subcommittee to State Department in 1947 (Wherry, 1950, 1). In early 1950, a State Department official before that subcommittee that 91 sex had been allowed to resign in previous three years, and that some had subsequently been reemployed by other federal agencies. The Republicans launched blistering attacks on Truman administration both for employing these people and for allowing them to resign without permanent blots on their records (although taboos on discussing homosexuality severely limited publicity). The chairman of Republican National Committee sent an open letter charging that the sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years ... [were] perhaps as dangerous as actual Communists (Perverts, 1950). Republican Senators Wherry and Hill formed a subcommittee to study issue and called in experts -- military investigators and Washington, DC, morals squad. These experts testified that moral perverts are bad national security risks . …