Did Ambassador Christopher Stevens seek “members of same-sex marriages” for his Libyan security team?

Ben Shapiro at TownHall says that the reason the administration lied about the nature of the attack in Libya was in order to cover up the fact that our “low profile” policy in Libya led our ambassador to go into Benghazi without a serious security team, despite the known threats.

[T]hey didn’t care. They thought it was far more important to make nice with the native population than to keep our ambassador safe. They thought that the Arab Spring was a nice, happy little uprising, complete with gay bodyguards to apply to protect the ambassador. Really. An ad placed in Libya—Libya!—for the ambassador’s security team made it clear that members of a same-sex marriage would be accepted.

No gay men applied. But the Libyan security team did tell the terrorist mob just where to find the ambassador. And now he’s dead.

Shapiro does not provide any source for this astounding claim. The idea is absurd, since, of course, Muslim countries, while they have plenty of homosexuality, do not have same-sex marriage. I did some Googling, and found nothing but Shapiro’s own column. I’ve e-mailed him asking for further information.

* * *

UPDATE: Reader Natassia sends a CNS article dated October 10 which seems to be the source of Shapiro’s information. The article is very long and I have not read the whole thing. Here is just the beginning of it:

U.S. Embassy in Libya Sought $13,000-Per-Year Bodyguards With ‘Limited’ English; But Gave Preference to Citizen ‘Same-Sex Domestic Partners’ of U.S. Gov’t Employees
By Terence P. Jeffrey
October 10, 2012

(CNSNews.com)—In the months leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the U.S. Embassy in Libya was seeking to hire two bodyguards with “limited” English language skills at salaries of about $13,000 per year.

Job descriptions for these openings that the U.S. Embassy in Libya posted online said the State Department would give preference in filling them to qualified U.S. citizens who were family members of U.S. government employees.

The job descriptions explicitly stated that this included the “same-sex domestic partners” of U.S. government employees.

[end of excerpt]

So it appears Shapiro had it a little wrong. It wasn’t partners of same-sex “marriages” that the U.S. embassy was seeking as guards, but members of same-sex “domestic partnerships.” Further, this affirmative action outreach to homosexuals went only to U.S. citizens, not to Libyans. But at the same time the U.S. embassy said wanted people with limited English skills for the jobs. Meaning what? That the preferred guards be people of Libyan origin who had become naturalized U.S. citizens via their “domestic partnership” with a U.S. citizen yet who were still living in Libya? It’s too weird to figure out. I’ll look at the rest of the Jeffrey article tomorrow.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 18, 2012 08:32 PM | Send