Washington, DC, June 17, 2009 – During a White House ceremony in the Oval Office this afternoon, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum granting limited domestic partnership benefits to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees of the federal government, including U.S. diplomats serving in the country’s many embassies and missions around the world. In a written statement, President Obama recognized that it was the lack of such benefits in the State Department that forced Michael Guest, the country’s first Senate-confirmed, openly gay U.S. Ambassador and now a Senior Advisor to the Council for Global Equality, to leave his diplomatic career, “because he believed that the country he served was failing to implement the principles of equality it espoused abroad.” President Obama went on to note that “[i]t is too late to prevent Ambassador Guest from having to make the choice he made, but today I am proud to issue a Presidential Memorandum that will go a long way toward achieving equality for many of the hard-working, dedicated, and patriotic LGBT Americans serving in our Federal Government – Americans like Ambassador Guest.”

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