Watching Peace Corps and Gay Issues to Evolve

In March 1971, I was a 25-year-old Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Ghana. Even though I had several months remaining in my tour, by that time I had come to the end of my rope. I had fallen hopelessly, obsessively in love with Yaw, 19 years old, a young man in my neighborhood. He knew of my feelings and actually returned them emotionally, but was unable to respond beyond that level. I saw no way out of the turmoil I had brought upon us both, but for me to leave. When I broke this news to Yaw, he was grief-stricken. He tearfully told me how he dreamed of us living side by side through our lives, eventually joining our families. He offered to distance himself from me to make my life easier, if only I would stay. But all I could see was that I was hurting Yaw, that his life would have been better had I never intruded into it, and that for his peace and my sanity I needed to extricate myself. I saw no alternative but to terminate my service.

For me, quitting the Peace Corps would be enormously consequential. Without the Peace Corps draft deferment I would become immediate cannon fodder for Viet Nam, unless I declared myself homosexual before my draft board. But if I made that declaration it would mean telling my family I was gay, a step I had never felt ready for, but out of desperation was prepared to take.

I traveled unannounced to the Peace Corps office in Accra and presented myself to the first American staff person I saw. Such visits were unusual in those days in Ghana. Our training stressed that we were employees of the local ministry and that the Peace Corps was only there for basic medical and financial support. Extensive interaction between PCVs and staff was not expected. So to this virtual stranger I spilled my guts about my past year in Kumasi. A gay romantic obsession was something you just didn’t talk about in 1971, especially to Peace Corps staff. I knew I’d be booted out. I’d already seen a gay friend in my group medically separated because he caught a STD; so I had never told a living soul in all that time. But I was ready to leave anyway, so I blurted out all the sad details. I told him I had to leave. I told him about my draft situation, my family situation.

But I wasn’t separated. Instead, the reaction I got was one of the greatest acts of kindness I know I will ever receive. When I was done, this kind man calmly said, “You know, Ralph, this happens all the time. Granted, it’s usually a guy and a girl, but Volunteers are always falling in love with Ghanaians.” Just like that, I was no longer a freak. The homosexual nature of my situation was but a wrinkle in an otherwise common phenomenon. And this staff person went further. He never told me I was crazy to go home under such circumstances. Instead, honoring what I saw at that moment as a dire necessity, he simply asked me to give him time “to work out the administrative details” and to come back in a couple of days. He knew all I really needed was time to decompress. After about a week in Accra I returned to my job in Kumasi. Yaw and I learned to keep a healthy distance, and I happily stayed out the rest of my time.

Flash forward to December 1996. Among the political appointees brought to the Peace Corps by the Clinton administration is Judy Harrington, a lesbian well known for her activist work in behalf of our community. She has become my boss, the director of the office of Volunteer Recruitment and Selection. In an effort to make the g/l/b presence at Peace Corps headquarters something more than purely ad hoc, Judy has begun a series of lunches for g/l/b employees to which guest speakers are invited to discuss various issues. At this December lunch, Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan is the invited speaker, before a larger-than-usual turnout of 40 to 50 people. I take the opportunity to tell Mark that I have been witness to big changes at the Peace Corps, from the time when I nearly early-terminated because of a gay issue I felt unable to discuss with anyone in 1971, to now, “when the Director of the Peace Corps is having lunch with me just because I’m gay.”

And I have indeed seen changes. In August of last year, I retired after a total 27 ½ years of official association with the Peace Corps, 25 years in various jobs at headquarters, plus my Peace Corps tour. (I was one of those rare “unlimited” employees, unaffected by the five-year employment limit). My entire time as an employee was spent playing roles in what the agency officially calls the Volunteer Delivery System. In the 70s I was a recruiter and I directed stagings. In the 1980s, I worked in what was then the Peace Corps Travel Office. If you were a Volunteer in Africa between 1980 and 1990, I got you there, as well as to and from your staging.

In 1990 I became an evaluator of applications, deciding on the basic eligibility of Peace Corps applicants, and then in 1991 took the job of Placement Officer for Health and Community Services assignments worldwide. I held that position until 1998, when I moved to the Africa Region to be the Country Desk Officer for, at various times, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal and The Gambia.

In my experience, a “comfortable” atmosphere for g/l/b people always prevailed at Peace Corps headquarters. This was especially so during the years of the Clinton administration, when our presence was not only acknowledged, but actively encouraged. There was a period during my time as a Placement Officer when I had two lesbian bosses (in addition to Judy Harrington there was Roz Wollmering, the Director of Placement) and 7 very “out” colleagues in a total office population of about 30. Vic Basile, former national director of the Human Rights Campaign, was another “famously gay” Clinton appointee who came to head up the Office of Private Sector Development. The Clinton administration placed great emphasis on increasing the diversity of the PCV population. Judy Harrington, as the head of all Volunteer recruitment functions, played a crucial role in this effort, especially on the g/l/b front. Peace Corps recruiters’ presence at Gay Pride events became routine. She also began training on diversity issues for recruiters, with a special emphasis on the particular concerns of g/l/b applicants.

The same welcoming atmosphere prevails even today, at a time when the federal government is staffed with some of the most socially conservative politicians in recent history. Director Gaddi Vasquez, the conservative politician whose appointment initially struck fear into many of us, has officially proclaimed g/l/b recognition months every year of his tenure, and freely acknowledges the contributions of our community to the Peace Corps.

Still, political realities never go away. The biggest issue facing the Peace Corps’ gay and lesbian employees currently is that of spousal recognition for unmarried partners of overseas staff, including travel and health benefits. Individuals at the highest levels of the agency may sincerely wish to move positively in this area, but their efforts are inescapably subject to social currents that effect the federal government as a whole. The Peace Corps cannot act on its own.

So what are these changes I say I’ve seen? They are really no more than the ones we’ve all witnessed over the years as players in American society at large. The Peace Corps is a product of the society from which it emerges, and it changes as society changes. People becoming Volunteers today, gays, lesbians, and everyone else, have vastly different expectations from those we had in 1969 when I went to Ghana. The revolution in information technology has made communication between PCVs and their families possible to a degree undreamed of in the 1960s. The post-9/11 environment poses special challenges, as the Peace Corps tries to balance the two basic requirements of providing Volunteers conditions for a worthwhile and complete overall experience while at the same time ensuring their safety and security.

And some things have not changed. Because of where the Peace Corps does its work, gays and lesbians joining in 2003 still have to be counseled that they will probably have to closet themselves at their sites, even though today we can happily add that they will (usually) receive good support from the Peace Corps community itself. This counseling itself is a huge change—at least now, the issue is recognized and freely discussed.

The perennial magic of the Peace Corps is that those who choose it seem either to know about such cultural imperatives intuitively, or can readily accept them once they learn about them. From my life-saving staffer in Ghana in 1971 to the most recent group of colleagues I’ve just said goodbye to, I’ve found Peace Corps people to be extraordinary, by far the best thing about having spent my professional life at the agency. Change is a central part of life at the Peace Corps. You are constantly bidding farewell to departing friends or greeting new ones, very often at the same time. Whenever I thought the crew I was with was the best-ever-possible collection of human beings on the planet, there were more just like them waiting in the wings. How much the Peace Corps contributes to the actual development of the countries it serves is a topic for debate. But the Peace Corps’ quiet celebration of individual difference is of unquestionable value right here at home. Little by little, as our numbers inexorably grow, we will all make a difference.