Terry Sakellos—It’s No Secret that He’s Out
I can’t help but smile when I see two young guys or a lesbian couple walking hand-in-hand on the boardwalk. Other than the occasional nervous giggle from an ill-informed teenager, it’s no surprise that today’s younger gays and lesbians tend to take their relative freedom from harassment and discrimination for granted.
Of course, things aren’t perfect, and there’s still a lot of ignorance and bigotry to be overcome. But we can’t let ourselves forget that as recently as a few decades ago, there were those who had no choice but to hide their true selves out of fear that careers could be ruined. Rehoboth Beach resident and Army Security Agency Specialist 4 Terry Sakellos knows first-hand what it’s like to stand up to the entrenched homophobia of the U.S. security agencies.
Terry enlisted in the Army fresh out of high school in 1968. After serving in Vietnam, he earned high-level NSA security clearances at Ft. Meade, Maryland. At the end of his tour of duty, he was honorably discharged and continued working there as a civilian. He made no particular effort to hide his sexuality, and frequented Baltimore gay hotspots like The Hippo, Mary’s, and Leon’s. He quickly settled down with a great boyfriend.
Suddenly, Terry was faced with good news and bad news: The good news was that his exemplary performance earned him an overseas assignment in Harrogate, England; a great opportunity for advancement. The bad news was that he would have to leave his partner and all his Baltimore friends. Terry sums it up neatly: “Boy, did it change my life!”
England, however, was not without its own gay life, and Terry, doing very well as a GS-11, was anything if not resourceful. He quickly settled into his top-secret satellite listening duties while enjoying the gay playgrounds of Paris, London, Amsterdam, Ibiza, and Mykonos. It was a time, Terry says, “when one could still be very sinful, decadent, and gay.” His first real relationship was with the owner of a popular hotel, pub, and cabaret. They remain friends to this day.
Then, the unthinkable: In 1983, “unidentified” employees of NSA accused Sakellos of possessing a copy of the Washington Blade, and characterized him as having “extremely effeminate characteristics and mannerisms….” The NSA witch hunt was in full swing. Terry was stripped of his security clearance and sent back to the States, despite the fact that his job performance had been rated “outstanding” and his duties performed in an “exemplary manner.” NSA maintained that his homosexuality made him a prime target for blackmail. Sakellos countered that blackmail was impossible since he made no effort to keep his sexual preference a secret. In spite of NSA’s efforts, Terry held on to his pay grade, and suspects that he’s the only GS-11 to ever stamp parking passes at NSA.
Terry enlisted the help of Frank Kameny, the conspicuously outspoken (to say the least) Washington gay-rights activist. Kameny had been dismissed from a civil service job in the mid ‘50s, and had been hammering away at the government about equal rights for LGBT people ever since. With Kameny’s help, Terry appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board. He maintained that his heterosexual coworkers were having sexual encounters with foreign nationals, and their trustworthiness and character had never been called into question. The MSPB’s decision was no surprise: Sakellos’ sexual encounters constituted “indiscriminate sexual behavior,” making him guilty of “concealment.” Terry’s SCI security clearance (higher than “top secret”) was a big deal, and NSA was digging-in its heels.
Kameny was neither amused nor shy. During the hearings, he referred to security officials as “bigots, nuts, fascists, Neanderthals, dimwits, and prim, prissy Puritans”; admonishing NSA officials to “give up their homophobic hysteria.” An interesting epilogue to all this is that in 2009 the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a public apology to Frank Kameny for unfairly dismissing him from his job 52 years previously.
In 1985, Terry Sakellos received no such apology. Because of blunders made by his lawyer (not Kameny), he lost a further appeal. Terry eventually took a job in Virginia with the Postal Service, retiring last October with over 30 years in the government and many acknowledgements for outstanding performance.
After our interview, he sent me an email stating that he didn’t want to give me the impression that he was “someone who needed to put a gun to his head for such a tragic life.” He emphasized that his life has “not been that bad.”
Proof of this lies in his recounting of a New Year’s Eve Party in 2007 where he met full-time Rehoboth resident and retired school principal, Bob Rice. Terry was still working for the Post Office in Falls Church, and it took them until the following May to overcome the geographical barriers. Terry and Bob enjoyed many a weekend here in Rehoboth, and when Terry retired, he sold his home in Virginia and moved in with Bob. He admits that it will take some time to get used to retirement, but he’s convinced that warm days on the beach at North Shores will go a long way toward accomplishing that.