Dec 05, 2007Quickie Link: Ex-Ambassador Criticizes Rice on Treatment of Gays
By vanrozenheim
(USA) - Michael E. Guest, a tall, soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair, looks every bit the diplomat. At the young age of 43, at the start of the Bush administration, he was named ambassador to Romania, and since he returned in 2004 he has trained new ambassadors before they ship out overseas. But last month, after 26 years in the Foreign Service, he did something uncharacteristically undiplomatic. Guest resigned from the State Department, giving up a career he loved, in order to protest rules and regulations that he believes are unfair to the same-sex partners of Foreign Service officers, giving them fewer benefits than family pets.
