Obama has appointed most U.S. gay officials

Less than halfway through his first term, President Obama has appointed more openly gay officials than any other president in history.

Gay activists say the estimate of at least 150 appointments thus far - ranging from agency heads and commission members to policy officials and senior staffers - surpasses the previous high of about 140 reached during two full terms under former President Bill Clinton.

“From everything we hear from inside the administration, they wanted this to be part of their efforts at diversity,” said Denis Dison, spokesman for the Presidential Appointments Project of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute.

The pace of appointments has helped to ease broader disappointment among gay rights groups that Obama has not acted more quickly on other fronts, such as ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military.

In a sign of how times have changed, few of the appointees - about two dozen required Senate confirmation - have stirred much controversy. It’s a far cry from the 1993 furor surrounding Mr. Clinton’s nomination of then-San Francisco Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg as assistant secretary for Housing and Urban Development.

Miss Achtenberg was the first openly gay official to serve at such a senior level, and she won confirmation despite contentious hearings and Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican, who denounced her as a “militant extremist.”

“It’s both significant and rather ordinary,” said Michael Cole, a spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign. “It’s a simple affirmation of the American ideal that what matters is how you do your job and not who you are.”

Gay activists, among Mr. Obama’s strongest supporters, had hoped he would be the first to appoint an openly gay Cabinet secretary. While that hasn’t happened - yet - Mr. Obama did appoint the highest-ranking gay official ever when he named John Berry as director of the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the nation’s 1.9 million federal workers.

Other prominent names include Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Fred Hochberg, chairman of the Export-Import Bank. Mr. Obama also named Amanda Simpson, the first openly transgender appointee, as a senior technical adviser in the Commerce Department. And David Huebner, ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, is the third openly gay ambassador in U.S. history.

White House spokesman Shin Inouye confirmed the record number, saying Mr. Obama has hired more gay officials than the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations combined. He said Mr. Obama “is proud that his appointments reflect the diversity of the American public.”

“He is committed to appointing highly qualified individuals for each post,” Mr. Inouye said. “We have made a record number of openly LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender] appointments and we are confident that this number will only continue to grow.”

Mr. Dison’s group lists 124 of the appointees on its website. He said the remainder are not listed because they are lower-level officials not formally announced by the White House.

“We learn about a lot of these through informal networks and then work to confirm that they are indeed appointed and that they are openly LGBT,” Mr. Dison said.

One Obama nominee who met some opposition was Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown University law professor nominated to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Concerned Women for America accused Miss Feldblum of playing “a major role in pushing the homosexual and trans-sexual agenda on Americans.” Other conservative groups criticized her role in drafting the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a bill that would ban employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Mr. Obama is a strong supporter of that legislation.

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