Editorial: Shedding light on policy change

Friday, March 17, 2006 | 7:13 a.m.

While President Bush grandstands on his national security policies, he has quietly revised the policy on granting security clearances to gays and lesbians who work for the federal government.

According to the Associated Press, the policy shift results from what the Bush administration calls a clarification of a 1997 regulation that said sexual orientation "may not be used as a basis" for determining whether federal employees could be eligible to access classified information. Under President Bush's so-called clarification, that regulation now says such security clearances cannot be denied "solely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the individual."

What appears, on its face, to be a minor change in semantics actually represents a huge change in the rule's application and philosophy. Sexual orientation, once barred as a basis on any level for denying an employee security clearance, is now considered a basis as long as it is included with something else.

California's Rep. Harry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, told the AP that the Bush administration "is waging a covert war on loyal federal employees who happen to be gay." His sentiments were echoed by Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who said the Bush administration has taken a backward step in changing security clearance protections enacted during the Clinton era.

Frank, who is gay, told the AP that sexual misbehavior could be grounds for denying a security clearance, but "that's irrelevant as to whether the misbehavior is gay or straight, unless you think that sexual behavior by gay people is inherently misbehavior."

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and House Government Reform Committee Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., have requested briefings.

But it shouldn't take congressional briefings to see that this policy change is simply wrong. Millions of federal civilian and military workers have security clearances that require extensive background checks, through which their sexual orientation may be revealed. Such information is nobody's business. And a person's sexual orientation has no bearing on his or her ability to be a reliable and trustworthy protector of classified information.