Proudly Out: Obama's Gay Cabinet?

While some of us in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are still holding our breath and, perhaps, even stomping our feet about the lack of an out cabinet member in Barack Obama's administration, the number of openly LGBT appointees, while scarcely two dozen, is actually scores more than we've ever seen before.

After a bit of searching through various LGBT websites, I googled "LGBT Appointments Project" and found a list of twenty folks. The Appointments Project, set up by the Victory Fund's Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute and supported by le crème de la crème of LGBT national organizations, started looking for LGBT folks to serve in the new president's administration before we even knew who was going to be the new president.

I thought that was a bit premature at the time since we all knew that if McCain won only the closeted gays in the GOP would get jobs. Nonetheless, the Appointments Projects was prescient and when the Obama transition team was ready to go, so were we-with hundreds of potential resumes of qualified queers to serve our country.

Right now, twenty of us have been appointed and we're not talking low level staffing positions either. The highest ranking appointment is that of John Berry, Director of the Office of Personnel Management. After eight years of malignant neglect by the Bush White House where the federal executive order banning discrimination against lesbians and gays was all but ignored yet not revoked, we'll now have a thoughtful manager with experience in personnel issues who will oversee the implementation of workplace policies throughout federal government. Berry is a long-time civil servant who is credited with turning around the Smithsonian's National Zoo. If he can turn around the National Zoo, managing millions of federal employees should be a piece of cake.

Jeffrey Crowley, an actual HIV/AIDS advocate and openly gay man with a Masters in Public Health will be Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy-our new AIDS czar. Crowley previously served as the Deputy Executive Director for Programs at the National Association of People with AIDS where he helped implement several key initiatives including The National HIV Testing Day Campaign and the Ryan White National Youth Conference.

Nancy Sutley left sunny LA for a sometimes dreary-although the cherry blossoms are coming-DC to take the helm of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She'll be at the forefront of greening America and will be Obama's principal environmental policy advisor.

While many in the community were pushing for Fred Hochberg to become head of the Small Business Administration or to be a safe bet for Commerce Secretary, the long-time LGBT activist and entrepreneur will instead head up the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Given the state of our economy, Hochberg may just be the right person to help tip our trading scales just a bit.

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LGBT political veterans Brian Bond and Dave Noble are also on the list of twenty appointees. Bond, who has headed up the Victory Fund and held positions at the Democratic National Committee, will be the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. That's the office that communicates and promotes Obama's policies to constituent groups and gets their feedback for fine tuning.

Dave Noble helmed the National Stonewall Democrats and was government affairs director at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He then went to the Obama campaign to head up the LGBT vote operation. He is now the White House liaison for NASA.

Perhaps one my favorite appointments is Fred Davie, an out African-American gay man, who is now sits on the Policy Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Davie is the president of Public/Private Ventures, a think tank that creates and strengthens programs that improve lives in low-income communities. While he will be one of many voices, hopefully he'll be a voice that will stop faith-based initiatives from just rubber stamping the homophobic programs of the radical Christian right.

Of course, there are way more gay men than lesbians in appointed positions and it's not clear if any are bisexual or transgender. However, this is sure a hell of a lot better than the last eight years under Bush and thankfully there was no Jessie Helms-type in the U.S. Senate to vilify any of the appointments as he did when Bill Clinton nominated Roberta Achtenberg Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1993.

We're in the house now and we're even sitting at the table.