MI5’s Closet Busting Strategy

Filed Under Military, Police Beat, Workplace Equality | August 25th, 2008 

MI5 Career Workplace Equality NewsRecent news that MI5 is actively recruiting gays and seeking to be a more diverse and inclusive secret service should be good news — at least for those who are concerned about security and intelligence activities in the UK.

Gays in the British Secret Services is nothing new. Over the years, they’ve been there, going about their business just like anyone else. At times there have even been notable known homosexuals serving. Or perhaps a better word would be ‘notorious’ known homosexuals…

It’s a tricky business, full of discrepancies. On the one hand, gays have often been viewed as being ideal servants of the intelligence apparatus. (Generally speaking, a person who has no wife or husband or a family to tie them down is a great bonus for any employer of this type of work.) On the other hand, gays have been (especially in times past) viewed as security risks; due to the closeted life that many gays have lived. I’m referring to the bad old days when homosexuality was a crime.

To clarify, one of the supposed security risks that homosexuals presented was the ‘fact’ that many would be easily subject to and susceptible to blackmail. Utter nonsense when you consider that heterosexual men are just as easily susceptible to blackmail when they engage in illicit sex of any kind.

One could say that homosexuals in Britain’s secret services operated in a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ environment.

By actively recruiting gays, MI5 is not only doing the right thing when it comes to workplace equality, and bringing them in line with the armed services in Britain, but they are also taking away one more lever that could be used against them and their people – the ‘gay blackmail’ ploy. That is, provided of course that their recruits and agents are out of the closet types of gays. And that can only be a healthy thing for all concerned, in this military and intelligence observer’s view and experience.

Related News: Britain’s spy service seeking to hire gays