James C. Hormel, the first openly gay person to represent the United States as ambassador, died in San Francisco on Friday. He was 88.
His death at California Pacific Medical Center has been confirmed by a family spokesman. His son Jimmy said Mr. Hormel had been in the hospital for two weeks.
Mr. Hormel, a philanthropist and grandson of the founder of Hormel Foods, was Ambassador to Luxembourg under President Bill Clinton. But his nomination process met with public opposition, led by conservative Republicans who portrayed Mr. Hormel as a sinner and equated homosexuality with addiction or kleptomaniacs.
Mr. Clinton first nominated Mr. Hormel for this post in 1997. By then, Mr. Hormel had been openly gay for three decades. He also had an impressive track record.
As Dean of the University of Chicago Law School from 1961 to 1967, he founded the James C. Hormel Public Service Program to encourage law students to enter the public service. In the early 1990s, he served as deputy US delegation to the 51st General Assembly of the United Nations, founding director of the City Club of San Francisco, and director of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
In 1997, Mr. Hormel also served as chairman of Equidex, a San Francisco-based company that manages the Hormel family’s philanthropic endeavors and investments, a position he held for years. He was active as a donor in the Democratic Party for a long time and was a member of the board of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the largest gay and lesbian organization in the country.
But his nomination was an issue for Republican Senators James Inhofe from Oklahoma, Tim Hutchinson from Arkansas and Robert Smith from New Hampshire, who were in the 11. The Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott from Missouri, eventually prevented the Senate from taking the nomination voted.
Senators cited Mr Hormel’s political views and his activism for gay rights as reasons to oppose his nomination. “We are concerned about the political views of this candidate,” said Gary Hoitsma, a spokesman for Mr. Inhofe. “He was an outspoken advocate of things like same-sex marriages that we disagree with.”
Mr. Hormel steadfastly met with each of his skeptics and challenged their resistance. It is unclear whether these talks had any effect, but Mr. Hormel was finally appointed ambassador in 1999 when Mr. Clinton bypassed the normal verification process and appointed him during the recess of Congressional. Mr. Hormel was ambassador until December 2000.
“He was a man of immense integrity and dignity,” said his son. “He was always proud to be who he was and he never tried to change.”
James Catherwood Hormel was born on January 1, 1933 in Austin, Minnesota, the youngest son of Jay and Germaine (Dubois) Hormel and the grandson of George A. Hormel, founder of Hormel Foods. He grew up in Austin, where much of the city worked for the Hormel meat factory that his father ran.
Mr. Hormel received a bachelor’s degree in history from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, in 1955, where he met his future wife, Alice McElroy Parker. They married that year and divorced in 1965.
After graduating from Swarthmore, Mr. Hormel earned a law degree from the University of Chicago. He eventually returned to Swarthmore to serve on the college’s board of directors. He met Michael PN Araque in 2008 when Mr. Araque was there for his sophomore year. They got married in 2014.
For over three decades, Mr. Hormel has worked providing resources to organizations that support people living with HIV and AIDS, or that address substance abuse and breast cancer.
Michael Hormel, his husband, said that Mr. Hormel has a “beautiful, very sweet, but full, round singing voice” and that they are both “keen advocates of the arts” who support the San Francisco Symphony and other arts organizations. He added that Mr. Hormel liked simple things like dark chocolate and an orange note in his gin.
Mr. Hormel received a variety of awards for philanthropy, including the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s Silver Spur Award for Civic Leadership and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Human Rights Campaign. He has also received honorary doctorates from Swarthmore, Hamline University in Minnesota, and the California Institute of Integral Studies.
In addition to his husband, who collaborated with him in his philanthropic and charitable work, Mr. Hormel had five children, Alison, Anne, Elizabeth, Jimmy and Sarah; 14 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
During Mr. Hormel’s time in the hospital, his husband said he pondered how Mr. Hormel’s passion for the legal profession had enabled him to be recognized as his wife and enabled them to spend the final hours of James’ life together .
“Without his determination to make the world fairer and more just,” says Michael Hormel, “I wouldn’t be sure whether even hospitals would have been so open-minded.”
