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. A favorable ailing would knock out
one of the main props supporting the anti-gay
“don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. JH
T he P e a r l
_
the
P e a r l
W elcom e to Park Place W here the everyday
joys of living in the Pearl's m ost m aiestic
high rise are a constant rem in d er that
you've arrived Luxury units from the low
$200s to $1 million plus
PARK PLACE
co n d o M A X I M U M living
Cif
P le ase
visit
our
sho w ro o m
a ^ V .
845
NW
11th
|
Portland
|
5 0 3 2 2 7 2 0 0 0
L
19