by Bob Roehr
Making the federal bureaucracy more responsive to needs of the LGBT community is an arduous, time-consuming task. "But the wheels of government are turning forward, unlike the last eight years," Vic Basile told the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association at their annual meeting on Oct. 1, in Washington, D.C.
Basile is a senior adviser to John Berry, the openly gay director of the Office of Personnel Management, the chief personnel officer for all federal employees.
"It is enormously exciting for me to play a small role in helping to bring about these changes" after three decades on the outside as an advocate for the community, Basile said. He was the first executive director of the Human Rights Campaign and later led an AIDS organization in Baltimore.
But he warned that though the election of Barack Obama "meant that the door was now open for us to participate in the democratic process," it did not guarantee results. "We are going to have to roll up our sleeves and fight to get this done; it isn't going to happen because we have a friend in the White House."
Edwin Craft, an openly gay senior career employee at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said members of the LGBT community "suffer disproportionate rates of HIV, tobacco, alcohol and other substance abuse, and mental health issues including stigma, suicide, stress and violence."
This year SAMHSA developed "an agency-wide sexual and gender minority interest group" that has linked together all program activities affecting gay people. LGBT populations "are now receiving the same consideration as all minority groups. This is historic."
He said the most important thing the federal government can do immediately, which it is already doing to some extent, "is institutionalize cultural competency training" on LGBT issues at the state level.
Craft said the work "remains extremely challenging … . Regardless of who is in the White House, government works slowly."
Jesse Milan seized the freedom to speak as an outsider, not as a federal employee.
"The federal government should take care of their own first" in terms of health insurance and other benefits for the spouses and families of LGBT federal employees, he said. If that person is legally married in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, or Vermont, "your spouse and your family do not have the same rights as the employee sitting at the desk next to you."
Milan is consultant with the nonprofit Altarum Institute and chairman of the board of the Black AIDS Institute.
He was approached by the White House to join the administration but he told them, "I was not going to give up my health benefits because my spouse is on my health plan." He believes that others have turned down the opportunity to serve for the same reason.
Obama has stated that he believes extending health benefits to the families of gay employees will take an act of Congress.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), the only open lesbian in Congress, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced such legislation in the House earlier this year. Basile said the House is likely to vote on it this year but he is not optimistic that the Senate will address the bill this year or next.
The cost of those benefits "is a whopping $56 million, including retirement benefits (per year) in a $36 billion program," Basile said. "That is about 2 percent, a blip on the proverbial radar screen."
Milan said repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act "should be among our highest health priorities" because so many benefits are tied to marriage.
The government also needs to collect basic data on the LGBT persons and include it in subgroup analysis of all major health issues. A combination of inertia and active opposition from social conservatives to including gays in things as basic as the census count has resulted in a paucity of knowledge of the community.
"It is about time that all federal agencies recognize the need to address us and include health disparities from our perspective in all of their plans … We need to put federal money where are our lives are," said Milan. He believes that every agency should be required to define a LGBT health disparities agenda.
