New GOP Head of Agency Says He Is Reviewing Material

By Stephen Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A17

A newly arrived Republican appointee has pulled references to sexual orientation discrimination off an agency Internet site where government employees can learn about their rights in the workplace.

The Web pages at the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency whose mission is to protect whistleblowers and other federal employees from retribution, has removed references to sexual orientation from a discrimination complaint form, training slides, a brochure titled \"Your Rights as a Federal Employee\" and other documents.

Scott J. Bloch, the agency head, said he ordered the material removed because of uncertainty over whether a provision of civil service law applies to federal workers who claim unfair treatment because they are gay, bisexual or heterosexual.
....

The B Man:
Makes me think Andrew Sullivan was right: there are conservatives and people in the Republican party who really do just want gay people to disappear.

6iron:
Lest we forget, we're all on the same team: Log Cabin Repubs, Whiney Liberal Dems, Flaky Independents and Pot-Smokin' Greenies.

This is a human rights struggle; we should work hard to transcend the petty differences between us.

The B Man:
This is getting crazy.
How did the Post find out, I wonder?

Makes me think Andrew Sullivan was right: there are conservatives and people in the Republican party who really do just want gay people to disappear.

twin58:
I'm cutting them some slack, assuming that they are just as horrified by this turn of events as anyone else here. Worse, they are dismayed at having been deceived by those in whom they had placed their trust.

ironjohn8:
\"But they wont, they'll continue to plug away, \"working from within\" for more wonderful success stories such as this one.\" (RazorbackTx)

You do realize that you're becoming a 'one-trick-pony' - 'working from within' - with that mantra...

and it's starting to irk independents! ME

gamecock:
Scott Bloch, who was just appointed to head (the Office of Special Counsel) last month, clearly is trying to implement his extreme anti-gay agenda in an area where he has no right to do so....

by Paul Johnson
365Gay.com Newscenter
Washington Bureau Chief

Posted: March 17, 2004 2:01 p.m. ET

(Washington, D.C.) Gay and lesbians in the entire federal workforce have had their job protections officially removed by the office of Special Counsel. The new Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, says his interpretation of a 1978 law intended to protect employees and job applicants from adverse personnel actions is that gay and lesbian workers are not covered.

Bloch said that the while a gay employee would have no recourse for being fired or demoted for being gay, that same worker could not be fired for attending a gay Pride event.
....

Bloch was appointed by President Bush to a five year term beginning in January.

Bloch said a senior OSC staff member first raised the issue shortly after Bloch took office in January by questioning a slide show presentation, used in training sessions with employees at federal agencies, that referred to OSC’s enforcement of sexual orientation discrimination. A couple of weeks later, Bloch said he decided to remove references to sexual orientation from the slide show and all other OSC materials posted online after reviewing the law and discovering that sexual orientation isn’t mentioned.

The administration is also busily reneging on its promise not to roll back federal protections for gay government employees. No one can spin this attack on gay employees as a response to \"judicial activism.\" It's pure animus, directed and supported by the fundamentalist right. I have to say that I have been culpably naive about this administration on this issue. They led me to believe they weren't hostile to gay people, that they would not use anti-gay sentiment to gain votes, that they would not roll back very basic protections for gay federal employees. I was lied to. We were all lied to. But now we know.

washingtonpost.com > Politics > Federal Page

Gay GOP Group Wants Web Site Data Restored

By Stephen Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 22, 2004; Page A19

The Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization that backed the president's election in 2000, is urging a Bush administration appointee to restore information about sexual-orientation discrimination to an Internet site where federal employees can learn about their rights in the workplace.

Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel, pulled references to sexual-orientation discrimination from the agency's Web site in January to review whether a provision in civil service law applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation.
....

Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said in an interview that Bloch \"is countering the promises of the Bush administration\" to uphold nondiscrimination policies for federal employees.

\"There is a lot of serious business to do today in America and at the White House, and to have Mr. Bloch to take time to delete references to sexual orientation from Web sites and handbooks is a waste of taxpayer money,\" he said.

In the letter to Bloch, Guerriero said that \"rolling back more than 30 years of protections for gay and lesbian employees is unacceptable.\"
....

CPT_Doom
... having just read \"The Lavender Menace\"....

By Michael Bronski

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. By David K. Johnson. University of Chicago. $27.95.

Welcome to a United States where people who have done nothing but express their political opinion are denied free speech, branded as traitors and jailed, where a paranoid federal government is so terrified that it reflexively strikes out at anyone or anything that challenges it, where gay people and gay sex is so demonized that Congress feels the need to protect decent heterosexual Americans from them. Now stop thinking about today and go back half a century.

While many Americans - including GLBT people - are aware of the anti-communist \"red scare\" that engendered McCarthyism and the blacklist that cost people their careers in the 1950s, few also realize that at the same time federal government launched an all out attack on gay men and lesbians in many of the branches of the government.
....

Johnson documents the varied night life - in bars, clubs, and restaurants as well as street cruising in places such as Lafayette Park - that Washington offered. And none of this was kept particularly secret - books such as Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer's \"Washington Confidential\" were enormously popular homophobic exposes of the queer scene. While [Lait] and Mortimer's book wildly exaggerated the reality of the city - they called D.C. a \"garden of pansies\" and stated that \"there are at least 6,000 homosexuals on the government payroll, most of them known\" - they did capture a sense of the excitement of queer life. Ironically while they may have publicized this life for other gay people (chapters in \"Washington Confidential\" can almost be read a \"gay guide\" to the city, complete with addresses of gay bars) they also increased the vigilance of the attacks on queer culture.
....

puckman1:
Interesting. We haven't heard word one here from our friends on the right side of the isle. Hmmmm...

The B Man:
Why was the other topic closed (re: You can be fired for being gay?) ???

Agency Restored Protection for Gays
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 10, 2004; Page A03

Gay rights groups and labor leaders yesterday hailed as long overdue a federal agency chief's decision to reinstate a ban on discrimination against federal employees on the basis of sexual orientation.

Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel, announced Thursday that his agency would continue a long-standing policy of enforcing employee claims of such discrimination under civil service law.
....

January 10, 2005

Whistleblower Staff Claiming Retaliation
Forced Moves to New “Midwest Field Office”

For Immediate Release
Contact: Danielle Brian, Project On Government Oversight, (202) 347-1122
Tom Devine, Government Accountability Project, (202) 408-0034
Chas Offutt, PEER, (202) 265-7337

Washington, DC — The U.S. Special Counsel, the principal protector of federal whistleblower and merit system rights, has abruptly ordered more than 20 percent of his headquarters legal and investigative staff to relocate or be fired. According to a letter of protest filed today by three national whistleblower watchdog groups, those targeted for forced moves are all career employees hired before Scott Bloch became Special Counsel, as part of a purge to stifle dissent and re-staff the agency with handpicked loyalists.

Bloch began the second year of his five-year term by ordering 12 headquarters employees, on penalty of removal, to accept involuntary transfers to Dallas, Oakland and a newly created Detroit field office. Bloch did not ask for volunteers or consult with affected employees beforehand. The employees have been given 10 days to agree to the transfer and 60 days to move. As many of the employees have families in the area it is not known how many will leave public service rather than move.
....

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 11, 2005; Page A13

Three government watchdog groups said yesterday that the official in charge of protecting federal workers from harassment by their bosses has undertaken a politically motivated reorganization of his agency.

Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel, told 12 career employees last week that they would be involuntarily transferred to new assignments in Dallas; Oakland, Calif.; and a soon-to-open field office in Detroit, the nonprofit groups said in a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The groups -- Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the Project on Government Oversight and the Government Accountability Project -- asked Congress to investigate the matter.
....

by Doreen Brandt 365Gay.com Washington Bureau

Posted: March 7, 2005 7:30 pm ET

(Washington) Five Members of the House of Representatives are accusing Scott Bloch, director of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, of stonewalling in their call for a clear answer on whether LGBT federal workers are protected from discrimination.
....

Last September, with Bloch's approval, several union contracts negotiated with various branches of the government removed the list of categories that are protected replacing them with the more nebulous phrase \"any class protected by law.\" (story)

While the change meant little to African Americans or other minorities, it effectively removed LGBT workers from being protected from being fired or harassed on the job.
....

You told the Senate yesterday, Scott, that: