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Obama nominates sixth openly gay diplomat to ambassador post

Obama nominates sixth openly gay diplomat to ambassador post
Clayton A Bond (left) and Ted Osius with their son Theodore Alan Bond-Osius.
Clayton Bond (left) and Ted Osius with their son Theodore Alan Bond-Osius.

President Barack Obama has nominated Ted Osius as the next Ambassador to Vietnam, the White House has announced.

If confirmed, Osius, who is openly gay and married to Clayton Bond, an officer with the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, would replace David Shear, who has held the position since 2011.

Osius, a career member of the Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, is an Associate Professor at the National War College, a position he has held since 2013. He was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 2012 to 2013.

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Prior to that, Osius served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 2009 to 2012. Before that, he was Political Minister-Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India from 2006 to 2009.

Osius also served as Deputy Director of the Office of Korean Affairs in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State from 2004 to 2006.

From 1998 to 2001, Osius served as senior adviser for international affairs to Vice President Al Gore.

Osius would become the sixth openly LGBT ambassador nominated by Obama, after Daniel Baer (OSCE), John Berry (Australia), James Costos (Spain), Rufus Gifford (Denmark), and Wally Brewster (Dominican Republic).

When Obama took office in 2009, only two previous ambassadors had been openly gay.

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