>>>Click HERE for complete video of Senate DADT hearing with Secretary of Defense & Chair of the Joint Chiefs.<<<
"The time for talk is over. The time for action is now." - Lt. Dan Choi. "The time for broad statements is over. We continue to call for the immediate halt to all discharges of service members because of their sexual orientation until Congress fulfills its responsibility to overturn this archaic, unjust law." - National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.
"The idea that such an extended process is necessary to adequately prepare for full legislative repeal is ill-informed." - Alex Nicholson, Executive Director, Servicemembers United "It is important to be clear that the government's data from all sides on gays in the military is overwhelming and already conclusive. The evidence is overwhelming that a quick turnaround on policy change minimizes disruptions to unit cohesion and morale. If this is the goal, there should be no slow-rolling of the implementation process." - Dr. Nathaniel Frank, DADT expert, author of Unfriendly Fire. Please sign the Courage Campaign's letter to the President HERE.
Dan Choi at National Guard training, February 2010. "Yes, Tony Perkins, there are out gays in 'no-privacy' barracks."
"The time for change has come. The most eloquent and most convincing testimony against the policy of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' comes, as such testimony usually does, from those who have paid the highest price for the policy's failings. And the most compelling I have ever read is on a tombstone in Congressional Cemetery, not far from the Capitol. It says, "When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." - Sen. John Kerry, VetVoice, February 3, 2009.
Leonard Matlovich was the first to volunteer to fight the military's ban on gays, a universal soldier in the fight against AIDS & for full LGBT equality in every arena. He was also a loving son, brother, uncle, friend, & "father" of untold numbers of lives lived out & proud.
"The American Revolution continued in the fight of Sergeant Leonard Matlovich." - Rear Admiral Jamie Barnett (Ret)
"He had the knack for taking your heart and making it catch for a moment.... He seemed to make people want to be braver than perhaps they were." - Neely Tucker, The Washington Post
"He will never receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom although he has earned it. If I were in charge of these things, I'd give it to him." - Aubrey Sarvis, Executive Director, SLDN, The Huffington Post
"The epitaph he chose is still as fresh as today's headlines: 'When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." - The Associated Press
"I bore his name with pride." 19-yr. old Leonard P. Matlovich at his Air Force induction witnessed by his father Leonard C. Matlovich, a 30+ yr. USAF veteran.
The Purple Heart. A landmine explosion almost gave Leonard his wish for an end to the guilt he felt for being gay. It would take several months in the hospital to recover from his wounds and years more to live his life and love out loud.
IN 1975, as Tech. Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, United States Air Force, he was the first to bring the government's decades of discrimination against gays and lesbians to national consciousness when he volunteered to tell his superiors that he was gay in order to create a test case. From the front page of The New York Times to the cover of Time magazine, from every major network news program, talk show, and podiums everywhere, he exposed the military's naked bigotry. For despite his 12 years of exemplary service, despite his extraordinary performance ratings, despite the admiration and affection of over a thousand of his Race Relations Class students, despite his Bronze Star, his Purple Heart, and his shrapnel wounds, the Air Force
demanded his discharge simply because he was gay. He fought them in court for years, securing a ruling that the Air Force had failed to justify their discrimination. NBC DRAMATIZED his challenge in the first made-for-TV movie about a living gay person, and, as documented in the ABC News video below, his example inspired many others to join the fight against Pentagon prejudice and countless people to come out. Wherever he went, he told audiences:
"I'm intensely proud to be gay and you should be, too. Unless we state our case, we'll continue to be robbed of our role models, our heritage, our history, and our future."
TO STOP BACKGROUND MUSIC SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF PAGE & CLICK ON PAUSE BUTTON:
1987 ABC-TV recap of his challenge of the US Air Force.
Historic interview on Good Morning America.
AFTER BEING ONE of the leaders in Miami's anti-Anita Bryant campaign, he moved to San Francisco where, from his apartment overlooking 18th & Castro, he repeatedly answered the community's call to help fight for LGBT rights once again. He crisscrossed America raising money to defeat Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned gay teachers in California schools, and Proposition 64 that threatened to quarantine people with AIDS.
HE WAS ONE of the leaders of the protests during homophobic Pope John Paul's San Francisco visit, declaring:
"The Pope is wrong. I am not 'intrinsically evil'. We are a moral people! We will do everything we can to make this world a better place. We are letting our love and voices be heard."
AS SHOWN IN the video clip below, he tried to establish a permanent memorial to Harvey Milk in Washington DC. He helped force Northwest Airlines to end their refusal to fly people such as himself with AIDS. He was arrested
at San Francisco's Federal Building and in front of the White House itself denouncing the Reagan Administration's passive genocide, and was still speaking out for equality in the rain falling on a Sacramento gay rights demonstration just six weeks before he died on June 22nd, 1988.
REMARKABLY, A GROWING NUMBER of other out gays, particularly veterans, have since chosen to be buried near him in Congressional Cemetery. His name and example are echoed again and again in the struggle to overturn Don't Ask-Don't Tell which is essentially "old wine in new bottles." Both The Advocate and Philadelphia's Equality Forum have honored him as one of the Movement's great heroes. Last year, in connection with the dedication of a bronze plaque marking where he lived, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared it Leonard Matlovich Day in San Francisco, and recently four generations of activists honored him in Washington DC.
Excerpt from his final speech six weeks before his death.
"A glooming peace this morning with it brings."
ON JULY 2nd, 1988, a horse-drawn caisson carried Leonard through the streets of the nation's capital to his final rest in Congressional Cemetery. An eight-member Air Force honor guard served as pallbearers. His mentor and personal hero, movement icon Frank Kameny, told reporters, "The Air Force finally did it right and on Leonard's terms today." Army Sgt. Perry Watkins, fighting his own discharge, told the mourners, "His example lets each individual know that they must take a personal stand, with pride and courage, so that the dream we all share will continue to move victoriously forward."
Injustice may endure but so does the memory and spirit of Leonard's courage and compassion to inspire us to neither run nor surrender.
Leonard
& Ken McPherson conceived of the idea of the Never Forget
Foundation whose goal was to create public memorials to LGBT heroes in
the same fashion as there are for countless nongays. The first
subject was HARVEY MILK. The dedication ceremony was one of the
main events at the 1987 LGBT March on Washington, attended by the Who's
Who of the movement including Frank Kameny seen carrying a flag at the
beginning of the clip, and Pat Norman, Harry Britt, and Morris Kight
seen at the end. Although Harvey had been cremated and his
ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean, Scott Smith, his former partner
and heir, gave Leonard a few mementos that had belonged to Harvey. The
plan was to eventually entomb these beneath a monument in Congressional
Cemetery where Leonard had already placed his own stone honoring all gay
veterans. Sadly, he passed before enough money could be raised to
complete the Milk project. NB: The narrator misidentifies the
year as 1986, and Harvey's office—he was, of course, a San Francisco
City Supervisor not a Congressman.
Additional video clips to come including Leonard's appearances on the CBS Evening News, the NBC Nightly News, the Larry King Show, and Nightline.
Not including Coast Guard.
Since this chart was created, Coast Guard #s brought the total to 633. As in the past, every branch discharged lesbians at rates disproportionate to the number of women in the service. Nearly HALF of those discharged by the Air Force & Army were women, even though they made up only 20 & 14 percent of those branches respectively.
While the new Secretary of the Army has declared that the military could successfully integrate out gay servicemembers, dinosaurs in the Pentagon's Jurassic Park still insist the sky would fall. Click on the photo to read about another one of our British allies, Trooper Ben Rakestrow, who recently returned from serving in Afghanistan
while totally OUT.
Two Iraqi war vets. First, US Army National Guard Lt. Dan Choi, cofounder of gay West Point graduates group, KNIGHTS OUT. After outing himself in order to fight the ban, an administrative hearing recommended his discharge. He is appealing through the chain of command. — Second, US Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach who's appealing the recommendation for his discharge which followed his being outed to his commander. After this interview, Fehrenbach asked the President directly for help at the White House event June 29th, who told him there is a "generational problem" but, "We are going to get this done." Later Fehrenbach said, "I had tremendous hope then, but a month has gone by and not a word."
Dr. Aaron Belkin, Executive Director of the Palm Center, on the President's legal authority to stop discharges prior to repeal of DADT.
The Palm Center released a study which argued that the President could, in fact, suspend the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law via executive order [under 10 United States Code 12305]. The study was coauthored by three of the top experts on military law in our community, all of whom are nationally respected law professors or practitioners, and military veterans. While some of those who have critiqued the idea of an executive order are lawyers, THEY ARE NOT EXPERTS IN MILITARY LAW, and there are a number of errors in their analyses: (1) This issue has little to do with the Constitutional question of divided responsibility for oversight of the military, which is mentioned only in passing in our study. Rather, CONGRESS HAS SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED THE PRESIDENT, BY LAW, TO SUSPEND ANY LAW RELATING TO SEPARATION, DISCHARGE AND RETENTION DURING NATIONAL SECURITY EMERGENCIES. CONGRESS HAS DEFINED SUCH EMERGENCIES, AND WE ARE IN ONE NOW. The statutory authority that Congress has given to the President means that there is no need to decide broader constitutional questions. 2) Members of Congress who oppose the order WOULD NOT HAVE STANDING TO FILE A SUIT to challenge an executive order. The fear that Congress would be likely to challenge a presidential order is premised on the assumption that the president would be doing an end-run around Congress. As mentioned above, Congress has given the president authority to sign such an order by law. THERE IS NO END-RUN INVOLVED. (3) THE DETAILS OF HOW VARIOUS SERVICES NOW IMPLEMENT STOP-LOSS REGULATIONS ARE IRRELEVANT. What matters is that the statute authorizing such regulations also authorize the president to suspend any law relating to
discharge, separation and retention during national security emergencies. THE PRESIDENT IS NOT LIMITED TO PRIOR STOP-LOSS MODELS in exercising his stop-loss authority.
(4) An executive order WOULD NOT SIMPLY DELAY LGB DISCHARGES UNTIL THE STOP-LOSS IS LIFTED. Under federal law, the President has the authority to "suspend any provision of law," not only to suspend discharges under a law. The draft executive order contained in the report spells out the effect of suspending the law, which includes suspension of all enforcement, investigations, proceedings, or other personnel actions. Some of those who have critiqued our study do not seem to grasp THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUSPENDING THE LAW AND SUSPENDING DISCHARGES. Congress has been tepid about the [DADT repeal] Military Readiness Enhancement Act and the leadership has made clear that movement on this issue is unlikely any time soon. IN THE MEANTIME, CAREERS ARE DESTROYED AND OUR NATIONAL SECURITY IS WEAKENED, WHICH BOTH GIVE A SENSE OF URGENCY TO THE NEED TO HALT DISCHARGES. While many people in our community have done heroic work in educating Congress about the need for repeal, the focus on Congressional lobbying need not preclude other avenues to a swift end to the discharges of gay and lesbian troops, including IMMEDIATE EXECUTIVE ACTION. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that AN EXECUTIVE ORDER WOULD MAKE IT EASIER, NOT HARDER, to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law when Congress is ready to do so, because opponents will no longer be able to argue that discrimination is necessary for preserving military readiness and unit cohesion. - Dr. Aaron Belkin, Executive Director, Palm Center, UC Santa Barbara.
After announcing July 1st that he was looking for ways to be more "humane" when applying DADT, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates keeps insisting that he can't find any. Why hasn't he read this report from the Palm Center outlining his legal options?
Nathaniel Frank's Unfriendly Fire is the new, definitive study on the facts and follies of the military's ban on gays.
His comments below on the current stalemate are based on his research into what happened in 1993 that resulted in "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
[President Obama's] approach appears to come from taking the wrong lesson from the Clinton years. Many see Clinton's error as coming out too soon on gays in the military, guns blazing, without laying the groundwork by consulting with military brass. But it's a myth that Clinton moved too quickly and didn't consult the military.
The new president met with the Joint Chiefs right after both the election and his inauguration. They just didn't like what they were hearing, so they balked. Clinton's resolve weakened. He called for a 6-month "study period" that allowed the opposition to rally and fester. Underestimating the resistance, Clinton assigned inexperienced, junior aides to manage the issue. In the end, a dressed-up gay ban was locked into place for years to come.
Already, signs show a similar story playing out. The White House will not say publicly who has been tasked to work on this sensitive issue. Obama has remained totally silent on an issue that his campaign and press secretary declared unequivocally that he planned to address–which offers the fairest way to grade him: by how he stacks up against his own professed goals. During his campaign, Obama did not say he would end the ban eventually, but that the time is now. "America is ready to get rid of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," he said in a fall, 2007, statement to the Human Rights Campaign. "That work should have started long ago. It will start when I take office."
It hasn't. While Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, declared starkly in January that the incoming president was committed to ending the ban, the White House said in February, according to the Boston Globe, that it would "have to study the implications for national security" before trying to overturn the ban and that such study might not happen until 2010.
Click to go to interview with author Nathaniel Frank.
By March, Secretary Gates said he had had only "one brief conversation" with the president about the issue, and that the dialogue had "not progressed very far." This statement flatly contradicted one by a White House spokesman earlier that same month who said the president has "begun consulting closely with Secretary Gates and Chairman Mullen" about lifting the ban. Which is it, ongoing close consultations or one short discussion?
Obama's own silence has left a leadership vacuum that's been occupied instead with these kinds of dangerous mixed messages. And opponents of equal treatment for gays are gaining ground in framing the debate: into the void have stepped over 1000 retired officers who recently signed a letter insisting that lifting the ban would "break" the armed forces. Secretary Gates, when asked about repeal by journalists, began hedging, saying he and the president would like to "push that one down the road a little bit" and suggested, according to the New York Times that it "might not happen at all." But if Obama is committed to ending the ban, why is his Defense Secretary suggesting it might not happen?
These contradictory messages say to those who are paying attention that the White House has no coordinated plan to lift the ban. And lacking a battle plan is candy to your enemies.
Obama's silence also has military costs: every day, the government adds one or two service members to the list of over 12,500 already fired just for being gay. And these ruined careers are only the half the story. By now, most of us are familiar with the fact that cables warning of an attack sat untranslated in the days leading up to 9/11 because of a shortage of the very Arabic speakers who had been drummed out under "don't ask, don't tell." Barack Obama inherited this policy. But right about now, he begins to own it.
Further delay means not only that Obama must accept responsibility for firing gay Americans whom we desperately need in uniform; it also means a bumpier ride once we do lift the ban. That's because with more time comes more venomous debate and an increasingly split military leadership, as the resentment of the old guard is fueled by further grumbling by their fellow social and religious conservatives. Divided leadership ill-serves the troops who are charged with carrying out a new policy.
Finally, Obama's silence has moral costs. Some, including those on the left who worry about the supposed fall-out of treating gays as equal citizens, think Gates is on target in pushing this down the road, and would thus give Obama high marks merely for avoiding a battle on this early in his administration. This story line has added resonance at a time when the nation's economic crisis clearly takes precedence over nearly any other issue. And so we've heard otherwise progressive Americans wax poetic about the virtues of gradualism when it comes to gays.
As a nation, our ongoing refrain of "soon" on gay rights is beginning to sound like the murmurs of a child or addict who insists that responsible, adult behavior is perpetually just around the corner. For years, Democrats have run from the "ick" factor of gay issues. And only now–not because of moral courage but because the Republican Party is imploding from its own excesses–will Dems be able to finally inch forward to do the right thing on gay rights.
For far too long, Americans have swallowed a fear narrative casting gays as a threat to national security. But since this threat has always been made up, the idea that Obama must wait until the right window to throw the fear overboard is beginning to sound stale. There is no brain surgery involved in ending the gay ban. Unlike solving the financial crisis, winning the war in Afghanistan, or curing cancer, we know perfectly well how to do it. There's no mystery involved, just will.
Obama should already have done what Clinton should also have done: issue an immediate executive order halting gay discharges. Contrary to popular belief, the current president still has that option: even though Congress has to repeal the law to get it off the books, nothing in the statute requires that findings of homosexual discharge ever be made. That wording of the law, along with the president's constitutional and statutory authority to suspend military separations when in the interest of national security still give him the power to cease firing gay troops right now. - Nathaniel Frank, The Huffington Post.
REAR ADMIRAL JAMIE BARNETT, USNR (Retired) was the Keynote Speaker at this year's Servicemembers Legal Defense Network Annual National Dinner. His salute to Leonard's heroism is excerpted below. Thank you, Admiral Barnett!
AND SINCERE THANKS to SLDN's David Hall for arranging for the memorial page to Leonard in the Dinner program, and to Barry Winchell Courage Award winner MAJOR MARGARET WITT for her kind words regarding continuing Leonard's battle as she pursues reinstatement in the Air Force Reserves through the court system!
“I WOULD LIKE TO START WITH A STORY, a piece of history. The story starts with a young Catholic man who loved his country so passionately that he enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, served 3 tours in Vietnam, won a Bronze Star and was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds he received in Da Nang. If you walk through the Congressional Cemetery in D.C. you will find the end of this story. Or is it the end? The tombstone reads: 'WHEN I WAS IN THE MILITARY THEY GAVE ME A MEDAL FOR KILLING TWO MEN AND A DISCHARGE FOR LOVING ONE'.” Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was probably the most famous gay man in the country in the 1970s. His face was on the cover of Time magazine, and NBC made a movie of his story. He declared his orientation in 1975, long before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and despite his exemplary service, combat tours, and medals, he was discharged six months later with a general discharge. But the bravery which had served him so well in Vietnam served him in a fight with the Air Force for his civil rights, a fight which resulted in dignity, an honorable discharge and a ray of hope for gay service members. So the tombstone was not the end of the story. Sergeant Matlovich’s fight still continues. So with that story from history, let me ask you a historical question: when did the American Revolution end? It hasn't ended. It is still going on. The American Revolution continued with the Emancipation Proclamation and with the 13th Amendment ending slavery. It continued with Susan B. Anthony and the fight for the right for women to vote. The American Revolution continued with Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . And the American Revolution continued in the fight of Sergeant Leonard Matlovich. And it continued in the fight of Sergeant Darren Manzella, and CDR Zoe Dunning, and in the fight of so many of you here, including the fight of Major Margaret Witt. And that is why I am so pleased to give this keynote address. I want to serve my country in this continuing American Revolution. I am proud to stand before you because I am proud to stand with you, the new patriots of the American Revolution, a revolution that exists wherever freedom and dignity are expanded with equanimity and justice. . . .” - Rear Admiral Jamie Barnett, USNR [Retired].
REAR ADMIRAL JAMIE BARNETT, USNR (Retired)
Button we distributed at Dinner.
“BY LAW, MEN AND WOMEN are still being discharged today if they declare that they are gay—even in a private e-mail to a friend that someone happens to find and passes to a superior. It is nothing short of astonishing, as well as appalling, that on the twentieth anniversary of Leonard's death the fight for basic rights most Americans take for granted is still going on. It is the reason why the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network exists. It is the reason why we defend service members affected by the law now known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and why we work for its repeal. That's our way of honoring a very brave and principled man. He will never receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom although he has earned it. If I were in charge of these things, I'd give it to him, not to General Peter Pace who declared Leonard Matlovich's love ‘immoral’."
- Aubrey Sarvis, Executive Director, SLDN, The Huffington Post.
Purchase this song sung by the out & outstanding John Barrowman, his CDs, new autobiography, & DVDs of his starring role in the BBC sensation "Torchwood" by clicking on his photo.
"Tell my father that his son didn't run or surrender. That I bore his name with pride as I tried to remember you are judged by what you do while passing through. As I rest 'neath fields of green let him lean on your shoulder. Tell him how I spent my youth so the truth could grow older. Tell my father when you can I was a man. Tell him we will meet again where the angels learn to fly. Tell him we will meet as men for with honor did I die. Tell him how I wore the Blue proud and true through the fire. Tell my father so he'll know I love him so. Tell him how I wore the blue proud and true like he taught me. Tell my father not to cry then say goodbye." - Murphy/Wildhorn
Nathaniel Frank's Unfriendly Fire
is the new, definitive study on the facts and follies of the military's ban on gays.
His comments below on the current stalemate are based on his research into what happened in 1993 that resulted in
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
[President Obama's] approach appears to come from taking the wrong lesson from the Clinton years. Many see Clinton's error as coming out too soon on gays in the military, guns blazing, without laying the groundwork by consulting with military brass. But it's a myth that Clinton moved too quickly and didn't consult the military.
The new president met with the Joint Chiefs right after both the election and his inauguration. They just didn't like what they were hearing, so they balked. Clinton's resolve weakened. He called for a 6-month "study period" that allowed the opposition to rally and fester. Underestimating the resistance, Clinton assigned inexperienced, junior aides to manage the issue. In the end, a dressed-up gay ban was locked into place for years to come.
Already, signs show a similar story playing out. The White House will not say publicly who has been tasked to work on this sensitive issue. Obama has remained totally silent on an issue that his campaign and press secretary declared unequivocally that he planned to address–which offers the fairest way to grade him: by how he stacks up against his own professed goals. During his campaign, Obama did not say he would end the ban eventually, but that the time is now. "America is ready to get rid of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," he said in a fall, 2007, statement to the Human Rights Campaign. "That work should have started long ago. It will start when I take office."
It hasn't. While Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, declared starkly in January that the incoming president was committed to ending the ban, the White House said in February, according to the Boston Globe, that it would "have to study the implications for national security" before trying to overturn the ban and that such study might not happen until 2010.