DADT Events During National Equality March
SLDN will be participating in the National Equality March on October 11. Here are some DADT-focused events to check out:
Repealing DADT: Lobbying Tactics
DADT trainings taught by lobbyists from LGBT Military Advocacy groups
Oct 10, 2009 - 10:00am-12:00pm
Wreath Laying at Tomb of the Unknowns
Arlington National Cemetery
Oct 10, 2009 - 12:00pm
DADT Protest & Memorial Service Honoring Leonard Matlovich
Speakers Span Four Decades of Fighting the Ban on Gays in the Military
Oct 10, 2009 - 2:00pm
Students for the National Equality March Flash Protest
Student-led protest calling for repeal of DADT
Saturday, October 10 - time TBA
Cadence Run
Run with LGBT service members and veterans military style, around the memorials/monuments
Oct 11, 2009 - 8:00am
National Equality March
March for Equality!
Oct 11, 2009 - 12 noon
For more information or to RSVP, click here.
10-01-09 By Liz Feuerbach, Communications Intern |
2 Comments
Comments for this entry are closed.Dave in Ft Leonard Wood on October 11, 2009 at 07.51 pm
Shame on you all for trying to ruin the Military!!! The military lifestyle and homosexual lifestyle do not mesh and never will. Let our military be an honorable organization, it’s bad enough that the military lowered it’s standards to allow homosexuals to enlist with the DADT policy and that increased the number of sexual assaults, and now you are trying to lower the standards further For shame. If you want to help the military then help get the homosexuals out for good.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com on October 04, 2009 at 12.35 pm
Thanks, Liz, for mentioning the events. A few addenda:
The Leonard Matlovich Memorial is also a DADT PROTEST! And, I’m pleased to announce that SLDN Board Member Jose Zuniga will be one of the speakers.
For those few not familiar with him, at 23, he was the virtual star of the 1993 gay march on Washington when, as a former 6th Army Soldier of the Year, he strode onto the stage at a huge celebration the night before in his dress blues and outed himself to help the lift the ban effort then.
The Army, which like all the branches then was fighting that effort with lying tooth and ruthless nail, kicked him to the Presidio curb less than a month later but not before his batallion commander, proving even the “straightest” brass asshat has a little Drama Queen in him, made a show of throwing newspapers with front page stories about Jose into a trash can during his administrative hearing. And, oh yeah, they also demoted him in rank on a false charge of wearing a medal he hadn’t earned.
This will be THE Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell-specific event of the weekend as Joe joins four decades of leaders in the fight against the ban. Brief bio notes:
FRANK KAMENY, a primary architect of the modern LGBT movement, first protested the ban at the White House and Pentagon in 1965—four years before Stonewall, and was the inspiration for Leonard’s unprecedented challenge as an active duty servicemember of the ban. First out gay to run for Congress. Helped force American Psychiatric Association into declaring gays not “sick.”
REV. TROY PERRY, another Movement legend, founder of MCC, and Leonard’s comrade-in-arms. He performed the first public same-gender wedding ceremony in the US in 1969 & filed the first-ever lawsuit seeking legal recognition for same-gender couples.
DAVID MIXNER, longtime activist for peace & against racism & homophobia, and original conceiver of this year’s march. Instrumental in turning LGBT voters into a recognized election demographic. Helped lead battle to lift ban in 1993; arrested at White House protesting its transformation into DADT.
TANYA DOMI, survived two lesbian witch hunts before resigning from the Army. Another leader of the 1993 lift effort, including a gay vets cross country bus tour.
TRACY THORNE-BEGLAND, former Navy Top Gun, has the unique distinction of having been discharged twice: under the original ban AND, then, DADT after he outed himself on “Nightline” in 1992 in the hopes of helping pass the first serious effort to lift the ban in Congress before Clinton even had the Party’s nomination. One of the few anti-ban people allowed to testify by Sam Nunn before the Senate Armed Services Committee field hearings, he was jeered by 2000 sailors & Marines brought into the huge hall for just that purpose. Before them & the nation, Sen. Strom Thurmond suggested Tracy get psychiatric help for his “abnormal” condition.
DAN CHOI, cofounder of Knights Out, Iraq vet & Arabic speaker, in the process of being discharged now after outing himself on national TV this spring.
ANTHONY WOODS, another West Pointer & Iraq vet, discharged after outing himself while in Harvard grad school under the Army student program. Forced to repay $35,000 scholarship they’d given him.
ERIC ALVA, former Marine, Purple Heart winner as the first American wounded in Iraq in 2003, who outed himself after leaving service.
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzFSgI1_FK8
Leonard’s first waged his battle THIRTY-FOUR YEARS AGO ... before cell phones and the public Internet and AIDS and CDs and DVDS and when Elvis was still alive, Elton was “bi”, Barack Obama was only 13, and Dan Choi wasn’t even born yet ... but we’re STILL fighting the influence of Pentagon homo hatred on the White House.
It is WAAAAAAY past time we rebooted the momentum that stalled over the summer and tell the President & Congress:
If Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is not wrong—nothing is wrong and we are NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
Saturday, October 10, 2 pm
Congressional Cemetery
1801 E Street SE at Potomac Avenue
Within walking distance of Potomac Ave & Stadium-Armory DC Metro stations.
Music by Potomac Fever from the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC.
Thank you.