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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 17, 2003)
k’ F ill 11 October 17.2003 1 news here is a real opportunity for things to change for gays in the military. 1 have not said that any time before,” executive director C. Dixon Osbum told those gathered tor the Servicememhers Legal Defense Network gala dinner Oct. 4 in Washington, D.C. A principal reason for his optimism is the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that stmek down state sodomy laws, as well as a legal brief that SLDN filed two days prior to the fund-raiser that takes on sodomy laws in the armed forces under Article 125 of the U.S. Code of Military Justice. “The military, unlike many of the states, actually enforces its (sodomy niles] pretty regu larly,” Osbum said. “You can face up to five years confinement for every act. So if one night you bring somebody home and you do it twice, that’s 10 years. You better have been gcxid.” SLDN has assisted about 5,000 men and women in uniform since its founding in 1993. One of the most dramatic examples followed the mur der of Pfc. Barry Winchell while he slept in his bar racks at Fort Campbell, Ky., in 1999. It vividly dramatized the fail ure of the anti-gay military policy known as “don’t Calpemia Addams ask, don’t tell.” So it was fitting that many of the speakers throughout the evening had ties to Winchell. His mother, Patricia Kutteles, presented the A 21-G un S alute SLDN celebrates 10 years of fighting for queers in the military by Bob Roehr Barry Winchell Courage Award to Michelle Benecke, co-founder of SLD N , who has since retired from the organization. “She has been a passionate advocate respon sible for making the military pay attention and making it change. Many of us would not be here this evening without the vision and commit ment of Michelle Benecke," Kutteles said. Benecke called SLDN “the voice of service- members who cannot speak from themselves." She firmly believes “that within the lifetime of the younger servicememhers who are in the mil itary today...we will see this policy fall.” Calpemia Addams was dating Winchell at the time of his death. The trans woman described how the Navy “taught me how to heal and how to fight” during her own service as a Gulf War medic more than a decade ago. “What Barry’s murder showed is that even heterosexual servicememhers are vulnerable to hate crimes." Retired Master Chief Petty Officer Vincent W. Patton III, at one point the highest-ranking enlisted man in the Coast Guard, explained why he, “a straight man,” serves on SLDN s advisory serving as a lieutenant at Lt>s Angeles Air Force Base and feared he was going to be outed. He wants to make sure that same support is there for others who need it. “I didn’t come out at the academy for one reason: ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ 1 was so scared at the academy that I couldn’t even breathe. 1 went from day to day, class to class, meal to meal, wondering when it was going to happen. When 1 was going to be paraded in front of a group of cadets who were going to judge me for breaking a regu lation, or court-martialed." Lehmkuhl lashed out at “those who call themselves the Christian right...w ho have raised countless millions of dol Vincent W. Patton 111 , at one point the highest-ranking enlisted man lars to halt and reverse the gay in the Coast Guard, called the military’s anti-gay policy “ ridiculous” rights” movement in the Unit ed States. “People are hiding hoard. As a small ghild in Detroit, his father had behind religion to promote bigotry against gay defended a gay male couple living in the neigh people more than ever today.... There is a dif borhood when they were the victims of an anti ference between tolerating religious beliefs and gay attack. That experience helped shape his tolerating dismptive religious culture." view of equality and justice for all people. Osbum closed his presentation by quoting He recalled a visit to one of his posts by from Abraham Lincoln. “If there is anything openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. which we should never entrust to any hands hut “He received a 19-gun salute, flag flying, but he our own, that thing is the preservation of our own couldn’t serve in the military,” Patton said. “It’s liberty and our own institutions. The power to ridiculous. It has to be stopped.” change is in our hands and in our thoughts." JH Reichen Lehmkuhl, a graduate of the Air Force Academy and poster boy from The Amaz B ob R oei ir is a free'lance reporter based in ing Race 4, said he called SLDN when he was Washington, D.C. S odomy C ode C hallenged Court appears to question military's argument regarding unit cohesion by Bob Roehr T he last remaining sodomy statute in the United States is being challenged in court. Article 125 of the U.S. G xJe of Military Justice prohibits the practice of sodomy by both hetero sexuals and homosexuals and is regularly enforced. The case that might strike it down is the United States vs. Eric P. Marcum, a sergeant in the Air Force. In May 2000 he was found guilty of performing consensual oral sex on a fellow airman in the privacy of his home. It has been appealed through the military courts and is now before the U .S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. That is the high est court in the system, subject only to the U.S. Supreme Court. T he P e a r l The major legal development since the case began is the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, which threw out state sodomy laws as unconstitutional. However, because of the court’s traditional deference to the armed forces on most matters, there is some question as to whether the ruling applies to Article 125. Government lawyers are arguing that Lawrence did not recognize a “fundamental right to engage in sodomy” and that the court should let the military decide how it runs itself. Gay rights lawyers filed an amicus brief Oct. 2 arguing that “Lawrence wiped away the sole justification that kept this court from strik ing down Article 125 a decade ago.” By overrul T he P earl . _ T he P e a r l ing the Bowers decision, which accepted the criminalization of sodomy, the court "made clear that the long-established right to personal autonomy precludes the criminalization of pri vate, intimate conduct.” Citing Pentagon reports on the widespread practice of sodomy by people of all sexual orien tations, the lawyers maintained, "Article 125 undermines morale and discipline by criminaliz ing sexual acts that are widely practiced, there by forcing military personnel to dissemble about their sexual conduct." A second amicus brief argues that no evi dence suggests that doing away with Article 125 would harm unit cohesion or the good function ing of the military. Among those submitting that _ T he P e a r l brief are Charles Moskos, known as the father of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and retifcd Adm. Bobby Inman, who headed up Naval Intelligence and the super-secret National Security Agency and later was deputy director of the CIA. Sharra E. Greer, Servicememhers Legal Defense Network law and policy director, attend ed oral arguments Oct. 7. She reported that the court seemed to rake issue with the military’s assertion that consensual sodomy could be held to a different standard than vaginal intercourse. “A t least two of the justices were reluctant to differentiate between private, consensual sexual acts,” Greer said. “It seemed clear that those same justices had serious reservations about whether one consensual sexual act could be more or less detrimental to unit cohesion than another.” The decision might come as early as the end of this year. 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