discrimination

Frank Buttino

Bill Thompson

Even years after the death of iconic FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the agency continued to discriminate against gay agents.

It wasn’t all that very long ago that the FBI was almost exclusively the domain of straight white men.

That is, until an agent named Frank Buttino came along. The FBI fired him after discovering his sexual orientation, but Buttino filed a discrimination lawsuit.

And as a result, the FBI’s homophobic hiring discrimination ended.

I met him in the summer of 1993, while his lawsuit was still pending. He had written his autobiography, a book called A Special Agent .

So here now, from 1993, Frank Buttino.

Frank Buttino died in 2018. He was 73.

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Christine Craft

Bill Thompson

In 1981. Christine Craft was working as a television news anchor for a station in Kansas City, Missouri. Six months into her two-year contract, she was demoted from the anchor desk, because of the findings of a focus group.

The TV station had hired a team of outside researchers to find out what Kansas City viewers thought of. Christine Craft. And what they found was starling.

The focus group said that Christine was too old, not very attractive, and didn’t properly defer to men.

Well, she left the station, then filed a federal discrimination lawsuit. I’ll let her tell you, in a few minutes, what happened next.

I met her in 1988, after she wrote a book whose title was based on that focus group research. It was called Too Old, Too Ugly, and Not Deferential to Men

So here now, from 1988, Christine Craft.

Christine Craft is 79 now, and lives in Northern California, where she practices law and is a part-time radio talk show host.

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