John Berry, a former Interior Department official in the Clinton Administration who has been running the National Zoo since October 2005, had been discussed as the nominee to head the Office of Personnel Management. Berry formally was named to the position today, as covered at whitehouse.gov. This would make him the highest ranking openly gay official in the new Administration.
It also means that an openly gay man will be running the Office of Personnel Management as it acts to defend the federal government’s discrimination against gay and lesbian couples. OPM, you might recall, is the lead named defendant in the GLAD lawsuit, filed today and covered here, challenging the Defense of Marriage Act: Gill v. Office of Personnel Management et al.
Talk about a tough first day on the job.
And talk about the problems of discrimination now being all the more painfully and obviously clear every time this lawsuit is discussed.
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found