A Tuesday announcement on the filling
of key administrative posts included President Obama's latest openly
gay official, Beatrice Hanson. Hanson, who heads a crime victim
assistance organization in New York City, has been nominated to serve
as director of the Office of Victims of Crime in the Department of
Justice.
Her nomination keeps the Obama
administration on track to setting a new record on appointing openly
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender officials.
Denis Dison, vice president of the Gay
& Lesbian Victory Fund, a group that promotes openly gay elected
officials, told On Top Magazine that the Obama administration
is almost certain to shatter the old record, perhaps as soon as next
year.
“Obama has appointed about 100 openly
LGBT staff to the executive branch in his first year in office,”
Dison said in an email. “[President] Clinton appointed about 140
over 8 years.”
“Obama is certainly on track to set a
record in this regard,” he added.
Dison's group has been instrumental in
helping the administration reach that new high. The group's
Presidential
Appointments Project set out to identify strong gay candidates
to serve in the administration. Hanson was among the hundreds
included in the project's talent bank.
“This is the first time the LGBT
community launched a coordinated, specific effort to increase the
number of LGBT presidential appointees, and it is working,” Dison
said.
High-profile Obama appointees include:
Department of Labor Senior Advisor Mary Beth Maxwell, White House
Specialty Media Director Shin Inouye, Global AIDS Coordinator
Ambassador Erik Goosby, Office of Personnel Management Director John
Berry, U.S. Export-Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg, and Office of
Safe and Drug-Free Schools Deputy Assistant Secretary Kevin Jennings.
Jennings' appointment remains among the
most controversial, drawing calls for his ouster by social
conservatives who've called him a “radical homosexual.”