The Last Frontier : On Civil Righs’ Cutting Edge, Gay and Lesbian Managers Often Face Choice Between Openness and Ambition

When “Julie” (not her real name) was “outed” by an employee who wanted to sabotage her management career, her company stood by her. Later, though, when she became more active and visible in lesbian interests, the same company warned her “to pull back in.”

“Hints were given to me,” she said. “If I wanted to advance, I’d have to toe the line a little more.”

For gay men and lesbians, the world of corporate management is fraught with peril and mixed messages. They know full well that in many companies, even those with non-discrimination policies, something that ideally shouldn’t matter in the workplace--sexual orientation--often does.

And in the ranks of middle managers--where a surfeit of baby boomers jostle for a few spaces in the executive suite--every mark, good or bad, counts. The conundrum for gay managers is whether being gay and out of the closet would be the one demerit that would knock them out of contention, or even out of the job they already have.

From leaders of the gay rights movement they hear urgings not just to come out, but also to serve as role models for other gays and use their management positions to press for gay-friendly social and employment policies, such as marriage equivalency and domestic partner benefits. At work, they notice that being part of a minority group often means getting trapped below the “glass ceiling.” They look above them and see no, or few, openly gay people in the executive ranks. And within, they feel a yearning to shed the ruses and the anxiety they bring.

Gays are largely alone in wrestling with their dilemmas. So far, big business has virtually ignored the problems gays face in management and executive positions. Homosexuals often miss out on benefits others may derive from affirmative action programs and diversity efforts.

The issue of sexual orientation, one of the final frontiers in the American civil rights movement, is further complicated by the religious beliefs of some and the sexual insecurity of many. Indeed, there continues to be contentious national debate about whether gays even have rights, or whether their rights ought to be protected.

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Gay men and lesbian managers say they are sensitive to negative stereotypes of homosexuals as sexual predators.

Those whose sexual orientation is known by their peers and superiors say they are constantly measuring their decisions against an unspoken and often indefinable standard of behavior. They are hesitant to hire what others might count as “too many” other gays--or even members of the same sex--of being a mentor to other gays and of pressing gay issues. The gays they do hire are often held to higher standards than straight employees, they say.

“The gay community is sensitive to the perception we’re going to inundate some place, that we will hire only gay people right and left and flood the company with gays,” said a lesbian entrepreneur who is active in Bay Area Career Women, a Northern California group that is the largest organization for lesbians in the country. “And we’re also sensitive to the perception we might try to use undue influence on our employees. . . . We can do nothing that can be perceived as an impropriety.”

At Federal Express’ Los Angeles station, manager Nora Rooney was accused of having a romantic interest in women whom she hired or promoted. And, according to a job discrimination suit she has filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, because she was a lesbian, “any woman she hired was also suspected to be a lesbian.”

Maria Chmaj, a bank vice president in Northern California, is “sensitive about making remarks about how someone looks . . . and I probably would hesitate more with women than with men. Everybody these days is being careful about office conduct,” to not cross the line into sexual harassment, she said.

“I feel I’m definitely pressured not to say anything. You don’t want people to even dream about (a compliment) meaning something sexual.”

Chmaj, like many gays, would prefer that her sexual orientation not be a workplace issue at all. But even for gays who are out and feel comfortable in their jobs, as she does, there are “still things you dance around every day.”

Unlike other groups that face discrimination--including racial minorities and women--gays generally can choose whether--and to whom--to reveal their identity as a member of a minority.

The choice was taken from Julie. But, like gay men and lesbians scattered throughout the management ranks of the country’s biggest businesses, she too had to figure out, with little guidance, how much gayness was “too much.”

Many figure that any is too much, and so they stay in the closet.

A San Francisco lesbian who was closeted as she rose steadily through the ranks of her technology company to become vice president for human resources said she “thought it would be the end of my career if I came out.”

“As a vice president,” she said, “I was concerned about what risks I would be taking for my career. But also, I was establishing policy, writing policy manuals, trying to get partners’ benefits (for unmarried couples). I didn’t want anyone to argue that I was fighting for this because I was a lesbian. I wanted them to see that these policies made good business sense, so that when I left, they would still hold on to those policies.”

The question of whether to acknowledge their sexual orientation bedevils gays of every rank and position.

“The vast majority of gays and lesbians are still closeted in the workplace, and that’s especially true of managers,” said Richard Jennings, executive director of Hollywood Supports, an organization formed in 1991 to smooth the path for gays in the entertainment industry and to offer diversity training that includes sexual orientation issues.

The kind of seminar offered by Hollywood Supports is a rarity. Most diversity training programs have yet to identify gays as a group with special needs and sensitivities.

“If you were to survey the human resources profession, in all probability they would not raise any overt concern regarding involvement of gays and lesbians in the workplace,” said Art Hershey, vice president of the Professionals in Human Resources Assn.

Many gays report that coming out in the workplace was far less difficult than they had imagined. Yet fear of revealing their sexual orientation is still the greatest problem shared by gays in the workplace, said Maureen S. O’Leary, an Oakland resident who is co-chair of Global, a U.S. and Canadian association of gay and lesbian organizations.

Leroy Aarons, former executive editor of the Oakland Tribune and founder and president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Assn., recalls that while he was a reporter at the Washington Post in the 1960s, he never came out at work.

“At that stage of my life,” he said, “I was convinced it would do nothing but harm my career in a very competitive environment where every factor plays a role.”

He was warned to be discreet, he said, by one of the paper’s managers who had seen him go into a gay bar.

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Gays are more vulnerable to discrimination in the workplace than other minorities and women. In all but eight states--one of them California--and about 115 municipalities, it is still not illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Several states and cities, in fact, have either enacted or are considering laws that specifically deny homosexuals protection against discrimination. (Two such measures, in Oregon and Idaho, were defeated in this month’s elections.)

Many employers still “think it’s a God-given right to discriminate based on sexual orientation, just like it was once thought to be a God-given right to discriminate based on gender,” said Daniel Stormer, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm Hadsell & Stormer who specializes in employment discrimination.

Jean M. O’Leary, a lesbian activist and Democratic Party consultant (no relation to Maureen O’Leary), recalled the time many years ago when she wanted to get into a real estate field dominated in the Los Angeles area by two companies. When she applied at the first company, she said, “I absolutely felt like I needed to tell them” she was a lesbian, “so it wouldn’t come as a surprise later when I got phone calls at work” related to her activism.

“They never hired me. I’m sure that’s why,” she said. She went to the other main player, didn’t raise the issue and was hired.

Many gays choose secrecy and obfuscation--even the cover of heterosexual relationships--over derision, rejection or more subtle forms of prejudice. Gays in middle management today share the belief that in the past, the only way gays climbed the ladder of success to upper-management rungs was in disguise. Once there, few gays choose to come out, perhaps because they have more to lose.

Gay managers say if they suspect, or are certain, that some of their senior executives are gay, they step gingerly around the issue. A gay junior executive in a conservative company said he was fairly certain a senior executive was also gay, but he was careful to respect his privacy, especially because he, too, was still closeted.

Wary gays take their cues from the subtle signs around them, and the dearth of visible role models is an important factor. Homosexuals tell Global they are often uncertain of support in their company because “it’s hard to tell whether there are any people in senior management positions who are gay,” Maureen O’Leary said.

There are so few prominent, openly gay executives at large companies that the same names are mentioned over and over again, she said.

Soon there will be one fewer. Elizabeth Birch, worldwide director of litigation for Apple Computer Inc. in Cupertino, will be leaving the company next month to become executive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the country’s largest political organization for gays. As the highest-ranking lesbian at the company, the spotlight has turned her way often.

Staying closeted puts tremendous pressure on gays in middle management, supervisorial and higher-ranking positions. Julie described her work life before being outed as “walking a tightrope.”

One woman found it too draining to remain closeted in a managerial role. “The more I come out in my life in general,” she said, “the harder it is to be closeted at work. It takes enormous energy to live your life the rest of the day, then not live it at work, where you have to be conscious of everything you say, to not give it away.”

Lesbians can feel especially vulnerable to bias.

“Women are still in a precarious place management-wise. Being a woman, you’ve already got one strike against you,” said the lesbian active in Bay Area Career Women. “If you come out as a lesbian, it’s a second big strike against you. It’s real scary. Lesbians say: ‘I’m barely here because I’m a woman, and for me to come out is a real risk and one I’m not willing to take. I’ll deal with a double life.’ ”

Edward (Ted) Liebst, now a partner in Media Connections Group, a San Francisco company that provides consulting to the telecommunications industry, was very nearly leading a double life during his years in investment banking. He was a vice president, wasn’t out and, while he didn’t want to lie about being gay, “if someone drew a conclusion that deferred the issue or dismissed it, I chose to let them believe what they wanted to believe.”

For managers, the coming out process is renewed with every new employee, or every new project that involves people outside their department.

“I was the most visible lesbian in America for a few years; the first lesbian this, the first lesbian that,” Jean O’Leary said. “But I’m still coming out. It’s a constant process. You don’t just come out to stay. You have to tell somebody (new) that you are gay, and it’s a very personal thing--like, to drop into a casual conversation that you have a lover and it’s a woman.”

Gay managers also worry that their sexual orientation might cause their company to lose business, or that normally supportive bosses will flinch at having the company’s name associated with gay events or public discussion of homosexual issues.

Birch has done “tons of gay work” while on Apple’s payroll, and she said her staff and superiors were supportive. Nevertheless, when the company hit busy periods, she worried that company executives would consider her activism “a distraction.”

Job transfers--often a prerequisite for climbing the corporate ladder--pose a particularly sticky problem for gay managers.

If the employee has a partner, that partner faces loss of his or her job and fringe benefits, almost always without the support an organization might provide a relocating dual-career heterosexual couple. Also, gays have an added criterion--often their primary one--when considering relocation: Does the region have a strong gay community, or will he or she be forced to live in a straight culture and face discrimination, gay-bashing or loneliness?

And gay managers worry about their opportunities to rise further.

Liebst of Media Communications said that in conservative banking circles, “if you are a vice president with expectations and hopes of being senior vice president, there’s a certain amount of socialization that occurs. You’re expected to participate in social functions. . . . I believed at some point my career would stop, I would hit a ceiling. I couldn’t have chosen (the management track) because I couldn’t have passed that part of the test. Right or wrong, I believed I wouldn’t be able to get to that next step,” he said.

Steven P. Neiffer, who is a vice president at a Pasadena-based bank, agrees. His colleagues know his sexual orientation, and it hasn’t seemed to stand in his way. Even so, he said, “there is an easiness between people in senior management in situations where they can involve spouses that is difficult to know how to deal with in my situation. There’s a lot of discomfort in regularly socializing with my superiors (or) the bank directors.”

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Increasingly, gays who tire of discrimination or of feeling that they must lead a double life are taking an escape route that has been dubbed “entrepreneurial flight.”

One lesbian who “bailed out of corporate life” said that “there’s a high preponderance of gay people who create their own jobs. They find a tremendous amount of freedom.”

Said activist Jean O’Leary: “What I have done all my life is to create my own environment where I could be comfortable.” She left real estate and now runs her own company, Print-tec Industries, a North Hollywood company that markets computer supplies.

She said she isn’t concerned whether or how her employees learn that she is a lesbian. “I don’t pay attention to the whole thing. I get to do that because I’m the boss. Instead, I worry that they are happy and satisfied in their own jobs.”

Another lesbian, whose last job was as vice president for a large corporation, said she’s ready to leave corporate life and the closet. She’s looking for a business to buy.

“I figure this way,” she said, “I can be out, own my own business, run my own show, have all the control and freedom I want.”