Talking About Heroes
The Advocate is out with its 40th anniversary issue, highlighting the LGBT community's top 40 heroes, as selected via an Advocate poll. Ellen DeGeneres (yep, she's gay) topped the list, and there are three entries in the top 40 of particular interest to SLDN supporters.
Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, a member of SLDN's military advisory council, clocks in at #9. "Why should we be good enough to be cannon fodder but not good enough to serve at home?," Cammermeyer asked the magazine in 2001. "Twelve years earlier, as a colonel in the Washington State National Guard," the magazine writes, "she became the highest-ranking official in the U.S. military to come out of the closet while still in service. The result was an honorable discharge, a decision Cammermeyer fought until a federal judge ruled that the ban on gays and lesbians in the military was unconstitutional and reinstated her."
Colonel Cammermeyer also tells The Advocate that gay troops can have another impact. "Imagine if every gay military person said 'If I can't be open, I'm out of here - send the straight people to war, and I'll stay home and go to gay pride parades," she said. "Now is a good time to leave the military - the very time we are needed the most. The impact would be phenomenal. Maybe then we'd get rid of this stupid, half-assed law."
Leonard Matlovich, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and Purple Heart recipient, ranks #36 on the list. Matlovich was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1975, and was the palintiff in an ACLU lawsuit challenging the ban on gays in the military. He won an honorable discharge and settlement in 1980.
And author Randy Shilts is #31 on the top 40 heroes list. Shilts is the author of Conduct Unbecoming, the definitive history on LGBT military service. (And, each year, SLDN presents its Randy Shilts Visibility Award to someone who has singificantly increased the visibility of gay service personnel.)
Congratulations to everyone who made the list of 40 heroes! And for more information on The Advocate's special 40th anniversary issue, click here.
- Steve RallsLabels: in the news
-----09-19-07
Comments
Comments for this entry are closed.