Our core businesses produce scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, reference works, books, database services, and advertising professional books, subscription products, certification and training services and online applications and education content and services including integrated online teaching and learning resources for undergraduate and graduate students and lifelong learners. Wiley is a global provider of content and content-enabled workflow solutions in areas of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly research professional development and education. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, September 4, 1993. This article traces the history of federal policy toward gay and lesbian employees since World War II, examining the impact of electoral politics, the bureaucracy, the courts, and the gay movement. Several federal agencies now explicitly prohibit discrimination against gay and lesbian employees, but legal protections for them remain weak. The ban was not fully lifted until the early 1970s as a result of court rulings that, to justify dismissal, the bureaucracy needed to demonstrate a rational nexus between an employee's homosexual conduct and "the efficiency of the service." Since 1980, the Office of Personnel Management has prohibited discrimination in the personnel process on the basis of sexual orientation.
The Civil Service Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation developed bureaucratic procedures to prevent the hiring of homosexual applicants and to fire homosexual civil servants. During the Cold War, Congress and the president strengthened prohibitions on federal employment of gay men and lesbians, whom they deemed to be risks to national security.