Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA) is the officially recognized organization representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) personnel and their families in the United States Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Foreign Commercial Service, Foreign Agricultural Service, and other agencies and entities working in foreign affairs in the U.S. Government. GLIFAA was founded in 1992 by fewer than a dozen employees who faced official harassment and potential loss of their jobs simply because of their sexual orientation. The organization grew to hundreds of Foreign Service, Civil Service, and contract personnel and their families serving in Washington, throughout the U.S., and at U.S. embassies and missions around the world.
Among other accomplishments, GLIFAA succeeded in pressing for the issuance of a non-discrimination policy by Secretary of State Warren Christopher in 1993, and worked with the U.S. Administration, the management of government agencies, and other employee associations to eliminate barriers for obtaining security clearances and create and implement non-discrimination policies with regard to entry and employment in the U.S. Foreign Service and Civil Service. In addition, the organization worked to improve the situation for the partners of LGBT U.S. Foreign Service personnel serving overseas. GLIFAA met with Secretaries of State Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton.
Read more about Gays And Lesbians In Foreign Affairs Agencies: History of LGBT Americans in Diplomacy, GLIFAA'S Advocacy and Efforts
Famous quotes containing the words foreign, affairs and/or agencies:
“I journeyed to London, to the timekept City,
Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.
There I was told: we have too many churches,
And too few chop-houses.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practiced by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“While it is generally agreed that the visible expressions and agencies are necessary instruments, civilization seems to depend far more fundamentally upon the moral and intellectual qualities of human beings—upon the spirit that animates mankind.”
—Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958)