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In 1975 the Civil Service Commission, responding to a federal court decision, issued guidelines stating that people could not be denied federal employment solely because of homosexuality. The guidelines do not govern some "excepted" departments. Among these, the Foreign Service and the Agency for International Development of the State Department officially ended discrimination against homosexuals two years ago, but the FBI and CIA are still holding out. The Defense Department clings to a hard-line policy: "Known homosexuals are separated from the military service."
Some 40 Congressmen are now sponsoring an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that would forbid discrimination in jobs, housing, public facilities or federally aided programs on the basis of "affectional or sexual orientation," as well as race or religion. It has little chance of passage this year. In the future, each side will probably win a vote here and there, but in the nation as a whole the gays and the anti-gays seem to have fought each other to a political standstill.
That is not the case on the social and psychological fronts, where the increasing openness and the acceptance of gays is startling. Significantly, some 120 national corporations, including such major companies as AT&T and IBM, have announced that they do not discriminate in hiring or promoting people because they are homosexual. Television and movies are treating gay themes more openly and sympathetically. ABC's hit series Soap, for example, has two homosexual characters, one a macho football player. Another sign of the times: Advice Columnist Ann Landers, a stalwart champion of traditional morality, now counsels parents not to be ashamed of their homosexual children.
In several big cities-New York, Boston, Chicago-gays have moved into rundown neighborhoods, renovated buildings and set up their own bustling communities. One of the best-established gay neighborhoods is in San Francisco, where homosexuals are flocking by the thousands from all over the country to Castro Street and the Haight-Ashbury section, once the capital of hippiedom. They are even being recruited for the police department.
The district was once represented on the city board of supervisors by Harvey Milk, a gay leader who was killed in November by Daniel James White, a former member of the board and a political opponent. Now running for the seat is Leonard Matlovich, who was discharged from the Air Force four years ago in a test case on homosexual rights.
Even outside such "gay ghettos" as San Francisco's, the most striking evidence of the movement is the astonishing proliferation of organizations dedicated publicly to serving homosexuals, whether out of or still in the closet. They are designed to help gays in what is still in the overwhelming majority of cases a lonely struggle: first the battle within themselves to face the truth about their sexual orientation, then the excruciatingly difficult decision whether or not to "come out" -and if so, when and to whom.