Eugene weekly., March 29, 2018, Page 9, Image 9

BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
DON’T ASK,
DON’T TELL?
LCC speaker will discuss her role in
taking down anti-gay military policy
RETIRED U.S. AIR FORCE
MAJ. MARGARET WITT
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y M YC H A L R I C H A R D S O N
“It turns my stomach every time they come out with
something,” Witts says. “It’s so wrong. It’s disheartening.
It’s disrespectful. It’s humiliating. These are people willing
to serve our country who happen to be transgender.”
She continues, “It breaks my heart — when you know what
it takes to serve, and your own struggles at the same time. You
are the soldier, the airman, the marine — it’s part of you.”
It makes no sense, she says, just as Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell made no sense.
As part of the LCC community speaker series, KLCC
reporter Tiffany Eckert will lead a community conversation
with Witt, who will also take questions from the audience
and participate in a book signing and sale of her memoir,
Tell: Love, Defiance, and the Military Trial at the Tipping
Point of Gay Rights. ■
Margaret Witt speaks 6 pm Thursday, April 5, at LCC’s Center for Meeting
and Learning, 4000 E. 30th Avenue. FREE.
DIANE MCWHORTER
BY PA U L N E E V E L
“O
people discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell who “just
disappeared,” she says.
Witt legally challenged her discharge, and in 2010 the
courts ruled that the dismissal violated her constitutional
rights and ordered her reinstatement. Her legal fight helped
lead to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of that same
year.
“I helped push it along,” Witt says of the repeals of
the policy that allowed gay people to serve in the military
as long as the military didn’t know they were gay. “They
didn’t really want the courts making the law,” she says of
how her case pushed the legislation.
Military policy on LGBTQ people took a step back on
Friday, March 23, when President Donald Trump approved
a policy that saying that “transgender persons who require
or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from
military service.”
HAPPENING
PEOPLE
ne day I was fine, and the next I had a label
that I wasn’t fit to serve,” says retired U.S. Air
Force Maj. Margaret Witt.
Over her 19-year military career, Witt
logged nearly 2,000 hours as a flight nurse in
the Air Force before being suspended in 2004 and facing
dismissal under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. She will give a
free public talk about her case April 5 at Lane Community
College.
She served in Operation Enduring Freedom and
received a medal from President George W. Bush for
delivering “outstanding medical care” to injured service
members and reflecting “great credit upon herself and the
United States Air Force,” according the ACLU, which
worked on her case.
Witt says she was fortunate that she could stand up and
fight — and had the support to do it. There were 14,000
Inspired by Woody Guthrie, who traveled the West as an itinerant sign painter during the
Great Depression, Delaware native Diane McWhorter picked up a brush early in the ’70s to try
her hand at sign-painting in the remote Four Corners region of the Southwest. Sidetracked by a
short-term romance with a Carmel Valley cowboy, she came to Eugene to visit an aunt in 1975.
“I found the Saturday Market and set up a sign-making booth,” she says. “My first client was
Humble Bagel. I’m still in the market 43 years later.” McWhorter moved on to silk-screening,
making cards at first, then t-shirts, tote bags and caps. She’s had her own booth at the Oregon
Country Fair since 1984. She got to know The Radar Angels performance troupe at the Fair, and
took part in the Angels’ first Jell-O Art Show at the Maude Kerns Art Center in 1988. “I’ve been
in every show,” she says. “This one is the 30th. I’ve used it to express what was going on in
my life. A Barbie doll was my alter ego, remodeling a bread box with building materials made of
Jell-O.” Her discovery that thin sheets of dried gelatin won’t rot and turn to mush has allowed
her to construct elaborate sculptures that last and to fashion hair ornaments and flowers for
sale at her booth. Ever since her surprise coronation as Queen of Jell-O Art in 2012, McWhorter
has joined The Radar Angels on stage in song and dance. The 2018 Jell-O Art Show can be seen
5 to 8 pm Saturday, March 31, at the Maude Kerns Art Center, 1910 E 15th Avenue in Eugene.
Follow McWhorter’s musings at gelatinaceae.blogspot.com.
eugeneweekly.com • March 29, 2018
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