The US Senate confirmed the Bay State’s own Rufus Gifford to be the next chief of protocol for the US State Department. The confirmation came on Dec. 18 with a simple voice vote.
Gifford, the openly gay ambassador to Denmark under the Obama administration, most recently served as President Biden’s 2020 deputy campaign manager for finance, external outreach and coalition building. He lives with his husband, Dr. Stephen DeVincent and their two dogs, Argos and Svend, in Concord, Massachusetts.
Reports the Washington Blade:
The chief of protocol for the State Department is responsible for being on the front-lines of engagement in U.S. foreign policy, which means being the gateway between foreign leaders and the president. For example, Gifford would likely be a point person for any meeting between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, making an openly gay man the face of the United States for a country in talks with a leader who has rolled back LGBTQ rights and looked the other way from violence against LGBTQ people in Chechnya.
According to a White House bio, Gifford is actively engaged as a civil society leader and has promoted and sponsored a variety of organizations, including UTEC in Lowell, Massachusetts, the LGBT History Museum in New York, the Human Rights Campaign and the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Mass. Gifford received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in 1996.
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