Have You Seen It?
SLDN has just released a first-of-its-kind legal guide designed for use by LGBT service members, veterans, future recruits, and their families after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) ends on Tuesday, September 20, 2011. To download the guide, click here.
The guide also serves as the core content for SLDN’s newly unveiled web site (www.sldn.org), which provides LGBT service members, veterans and their families with an array of legal tools and resources to navigate the post-DADT repeal military environment. Freedom to Serve addresses issues like standards of conduct, benefits for spouses and families of service members, discharge upgrades, and veterans benefits. It also enables members of the LGBT military community to better understand how to protect themselves if they are targeted on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
We hope you find this new information useful, and share it with your military friends, veterans, and their families. We also encourage you to contact us with your feedback and questions.
But remember, the new guidance becomes effective only upon repeal of DADT on Tuesday, September 20, 2011. Until then, anyone seeking information or assistance should consult the SLDN Survival Guide, outlining issues related to serving under DADT, or contact our legal hotline.
Thank you for standing with us on behalf of all service members, veterans and their families.
P.S. Mark your calendars for Tuesday, September 20! SLDN will be celebrating DADT repeal with events throughout the nation. More information coming soon.
07-29-11 By David McKean, SLDN Legal Director |
2 Comments
Comments for this entry are closed.Veronica W Ashley on August 13, 2011 at 03.20 pm
Why is this all about fing gays and lessbians as always. Please stop saying LGBT when the T doesnt exist. I am a transsexual who keeps getting the shaft by the LGB. DODT is worthless if a transsexual cant accepted as a human can you this orgaanization is worthless. Staying withing a gender binary system is archaic, but I guess it works for gays and lesbians so does that mean that LGB is just really a str8 community behaving under the norms of aa binary system.
Michael Bedwell on July 29, 2011 at 03.05 pm
Many thanks for this. Of what I’ve had time to read so far, the guide appears excellent in most ways. HOWEVER in at least one crucial area it is only adding to the confusion and misinformation appearing again and again in both gay and mainstream media.
One speaks specifically of what is behind the Pentagon’s stated intention to deny gay couples access to “military family housing” or MFH. First, the guide contradicts itself to a degree, which one assumes is the result of time for adequate proofreading being overcome by the eagerness to publish. Fortunately, at least the Internet PDF version can be easily corrected which I, respectfully, urge you to do at once.
In short, at points, the guide wrongly asserts that MFH access is explicitly banned by DOMA, e.g., “DOMA prevents the military from recognizing same-sex spouses as dependents of service members, so Military Family Housing (MFH) and dependent-rate BAH is generally unavailable to same-sex couples unless they have children.” But, at others, it accurately observes, if still not sufficiently clear, that it does not.
The latter is unequivocally conceded in the Pentagon’s “Report of the Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with the Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’.” Quote, emphasis mine:
“A third category of benefits are those THAT ARE NOT STATUTORILY PROHIBITED, but that current REGULATIONS do not extend to same-sex partners. With regard to this category, the Department of Defense and the services HAVE THE REGULATORY FLEXIBILITY TO REVISE AND REDEFINE THE ELIGIBLE BENEFICIARIES TO INCLUDE SAME-SEX PARTNERS. … Military family housing is another prominent benefit IN THIS CATEGORY. However, we do not recommend at this time that military family housing BE included in the benefits eligible for this member-designated approach. Permitting a Service member to qualify for military family housing, simply by designating whomever he or she chooses as a ‘dependent’, is problematic. Military family housing is a limited resource and complicated to administer, and a system of member designation would create occasions for abuse and unfairness.” [By “unfairness” they mean to unmarried straight couples currently denied MFH. Absurd, of course, on its face for the fact that all straight couples have the option of federally recognized, legal marriage.]
TRANSLATION: NOTHING related to DOMA prevents the Pentagon from giving gay couples, with or without children, access to MFH—they’re simply refusing to. Yes, we must press for repeal of DOMA, but as that is going to be a long and difficult struggle—and would not change this POLICY, per se, in any case—it is vital to make clear to gay and lesbian service members and our Community at large that we need not wait either legally or strategically for that regarding MFH and other partner benefits being ARBITRARILY denied. Rather such legally possible changes should be added to that list of PREMEDITATED acts of discrimination SLDN has asked the President to forbid by Executive Order.
In another area, while, perhaps, experiences of recent SLDN clients suggest otherwise, the guide’s section on “sodomy” contradicts the DoD’s current official approach as explained in pre-repeal implementation “training” of all the troops. Quoting from their materials, with emphasis theirs:
“Sodomy under the proposed change to Article 125 of the UCMJ may be punishable if it is WITHOUT consent (forcible). In light of decisions by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, private acts of sodomy between consenting adults, regardless of their sex, are NOT punishable—absent factors unique to the military environment (such as a senior-subordinate relationship or other circumstance adverse to good order and discipline).”
It certainly isn’t inappropriate to note that gays still have some technical vulnerability until Article 125 is repealed, but except for the presence of exacerbating factors [which the guide does mention] creating what attorneys have come to refer to as “prejudicial sodomy,” “NOT punishable” is “NOT punishable.”
The survival guides SLDN has published over the years have been indispensable, in both practical and legal/social change terms. Once corrected, this one can be, too. For not only is knowledge power, but we are going to need as much of both as we can muster when the premeditated denial of inclusion of gay and lesbian service members under the Military Equal Opportunity Act and of MFH access, et al., demonstrate that, despite disingenuous rhetoric to the contrary, recalcitrant homophobes in the Pentagon are intent upon obstructing our first class citizenship as much and as long as possible.
Thank you.
Michael Bedwell
http://www.leonardmatlovich.com