A Puritanical Government

When it comes to sex, the U.S. Government can be as prim as a Victorian maiden aunt. About one-fifth of all federal civil service employees who have been dismissed for misconduct in recent years have been fired because the Government found they had engaged in conduct that was "notorious, scandalous and subject to public censure." Now that policy is under heavy attack on a variety of constitutional and statutory grounds.

Five years ago, the FBI fired a bachelor clerk named Thomas Carter for admittedly sharing his bed with a girl he had known and dated for years. (He denied having had intercourse with her) The bureau's interest was triggered by an anonymous letter reporting that the 25-year-old Carter was "sleeping with young girls and carrying on." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia later ruled that Carter was entitled to a trial to determine whether his conduct was cause for discharge Chiding the Government for invoking the standard of the lady from Dubuque,"* the court held that the bureau would have to prove that Carter had violated "ordinarily expected standards of personal conduct."

Instead, the FBI recently settled out of court. It rescinded Carter's firing, paid him $3,000 for the time he was unemployed and allowed the disgusted clerk to resign in good standing. Almost simultaneously, a U.S. district court in San Francisco ruled that the post office was arbitrary and capricious when it fired 23-year-old Clerk Neil Mindel for living with a girl who was not his wife. By failing to prove any connection between his sexual behavior and his postal duties, the court said, his superiors had deprived him of due process of law. The court emphasized that the Government's discretionary powers over its employees are "not unlimited," and added: "The specter of the Government dashing about investigating this non-notorious and not uncommon relationship that was totally divorced from plaintiff's governmental duties is the most disturbing aspect of this case."

Open Admission. A commonly invoked ground for dismissal is the congressional authorization to dismiss for "such cause as will promote the efficiency of the service." Until a few years ago, the Government usually regarded even the possibility of unfavorable publicity as a threat to efficiency. Thus an unmarried woman was fired by the post office for becoming pregnant--a condition that the department's review board later found to be an insufficient cause. The Civil Service Commission retains other notions of convention. While it ignores most violators of fornication laws, it investigates male homosexuals more often than lesbians, whom the commission regards as less repugnant to the public.

The Mattachine Society, one of several groups defending the interests of homosexuals, has encouraged them to bring legal action against the Government and publicize their own cases. One who has done just that is Benning Wentworth, an electronics technician employed by a New Jersey defense contractor; for nearly four years he has been fighting a Defense Department attempt to revoke his security clearance. He challenges the traditional assumption that all homosexuals are vulnerable to blackmail and therefore unsuited to jobs that give them access to secret information. How can he be blackmailed, Wentworth argues, when he openly admits that he is a homosexual? It is a question the Defense Department may not find easy to answer.

* An echo of the late Harold Ross, editor of The New Yorker, who once said that he designed his magazine for New York City readers and not for the tastes of "the old lady in Dubuque."

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