Former U.S. ambassador Richard Hoagland, a career foreign service officer, spoke candidly at a gay pride conference this week about the difficulties gay diplomats faced in the not-so-distant past.

In 1994, rumors circulated that President Bill Clinton would nominate James Hormel, the openly gay American philanthropist, to the post of U.S. ambassador to Fiji. While the reason Hormel was not nominated was never clear, some argued that the White House did not pursue his nomination because the Fijian Penal Code criminalized homosexuality at the time.