Living History
This past weekend, out-going SLDN executive director Dixon Osburn (pictured, with the cast of Showtime's The L Word at SLDN's national dinner) sat down with reporter Bob Roehr for an in-depth conversation about the organization, lifting the ban and the history of the LGBT civil rights movement. The result is a must-read interview in this week's issue of Windy City Times.
From Bob's story:
“People ask, ‘How did you start it?’ I say, ‘Very naively,” Osburn replies with the self-deprecating humor that has helped to make him so effective. Another veterans’ group loaned them office space for three months and, after that, they were on their own.
“Had you told me 13 years ago you are going to run a $3 million organization, and galvanize a community on this issue, and get a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs [of Staff] to speak up, I would have said you’re crazy,” he said. “But it’s been a blast.”
SLDN “was very entrepreneurial, very scrappy,” Osburn said. “We really did burn the midnight oil, scrapping together the money and slowly growing, thinking very carefully about what we could do with the funds. It was primarily helping soldiers and trying to educate the public.”
They kept the pressure on the Pentagon, highlighting violations of its own policy within the ranks, and putting human faces to the travesty of the policy—the destruction of careers and, in the case of Barry Winchell, his brutal murder at the hands of a homophobe, which the Army at first tried to deny.
“All of a sudden you had a debate going about what Don’t Ask Don’t Tell really means and does,” says Osburn. “Over 13 years, public opinion shifted dramatically in our favor—from a bare majority in 1993 in our favor to 79 percent today.” Little of that would have happened had it not been for SLDN.
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You can read Bob's full interview online here.
- Steve RallsLabels: in the news, Osburn
-----05-03-07
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