Frontlines: The Latest from OutServe-SLDN

About Last Night

Six young Marines drove up from North Carolina to attend the 16th SLDN Annual Dinner in Washington Saturday night. They stood tall in their dress blue uniforms and I think they had a good time. At the end of the evening one of those Marines approached me and said, “Sir, we got out our wallets and came up with this. We want to help.” He handed me $77.00 in cash. To say that I was amazed would be an understatement, amazed and very moved. At that moment I realized yet again what an awesome responsibility we have at SLDN. The women and men in uniform serving under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell are counting on us. They look to us for legal help and they look to us to get this law repealed. The evening was a success on all counts. It was dazzling and elegant, the National Building Museum looked truly beautiful and the food was delicious. We had a great crowd—some 900 men and women filled the hall. The speeches were inspiring, and the champagne sparkled. We’re still adding up the results, but it looks like we raised close to $750,000 around the annual dinner, and nearly $155,000 of that amount came during what we call The Ask. That’s the best we’ve ever done. But the evening was finally about something else besides glitter and excitement and dollars raised. It was what those six Marines who’d driven up from North Carolina, those young men who’d dug into their pockets to hand me their $77 in cash—the evening was about what they represented. And they represented the thousands of men and women in our armed services that we serve. It’s for them that we are putting all our efforts into repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell so that not one of them ever requires our legal services again. That’s our mission, and if you haven’t signed on yet, now is the time. Join us. You’ll be glad that you did—and so will we.