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Diplomats’ Same-Sex Partners to Get Benefits
WASHINGTON
— The State Department will offer equal benefits and protections to
same-sex partners of American diplomats, according to an internal
memorandum Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent last week to an association of gay and lesbian Foreign Service officers.
Mrs.
Clinton said the policy change addressed an inequity in the treatment
of domestic partners and would help the State Department recruit
diplomats, since many international employers already offered such
benefits.
“Like all families, our Foreign Service families come
in different configurations; all are part of the common fabric of our
post communities abroad,” Mrs. Clinton said in the memorandum, a copy
of which was provided to The New York Times by a member of the gay and
lesbian association.
“At bottom,” she said, “the department will
provide these benefits for both opposite-sex and same-sex partners
because it is the right thing to do.”
A senior State Department official confirmed the new policy, though he did not say when it would take effect.
Among
the benefits are diplomatic passports, use of medical facilities at
overseas posts, medical and other emergency evacuation, transportation
between posts, and training in security and languages.
Gay and
lesbian diplomats have lobbied the State Department for these benefits
for several years. Under current policy, they note, diplomats with
domestic partners could be evacuated from a hazardous country by the
American government while their partners were left behind.
The
State Department had declined to provide some benefits to the partners
of diplomats, invoking the Defense of Marriage Act, which limited
federal recognition of same-sex unions.
Mrs. Clinton was asked
about the issue in February at her first town-hall-style meeting with
department employees. “I view this as an issue of workplace fairness,
employee retention, and the safety and effectiveness of our embassy
communities worldwide,” she said, to applause.
Influential
lawmakers also pushed for the changes — even drafting legislation
requiring the State Department to offer these benefits — until Mrs.
Clinton assured them that she would address the issue.
At a
hearing last week on financing for the State Department, the chairman
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Howard L. Berman,
welcomed news of the planned change in policy. Mr. Berman, Democrat of
California, introduced a former ambassador to Romania, Michael Guest,
who left the Foreign Service in 2007, citing unfair treatment of his
partner, Alex Nevarez.
Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, appointed the nation’s first openly gay ambassador, James C. Hormel, to serve in Luxembourg. Opposition by Republican senators blocked a vote on the appointment, leading Mr. Clinton to appoint him eventually during a Congressional recess in 1999.