SECURITY CLEARANCES FOR HOMOSEXUALS

With the stroke of a pen, President Clinton today forbade federal agencies to consider sexual orientation in granting security clearances. Though gay rights groups praised the move as a signal of respect, TIME's Douglas Waller says agencies are no longer "hung up" on the Cold War mentality that blackballed homosexuals for fear they would be blackmailed. "The CIA no longer screens for homosexuals," Waller says. "About five years ago, other agencies had a question on their polygraph tests about whether the person ever had homosexual tendecies, but people kept on tripping on the polygraph because of the way it was phrased."