Pentagon holds first gay pride event
The Pentagon on Tuesday saluted open gays in the ranks, with a civilian lawyer calling on fellow homosexuals to “stretch a little” and become more visible inside the military in the drive for benefits for same-sex couples.
“We need to be as visible as we can be,” Gordon Tanner, principal deputy general counsel of the Air Force, said at the Defense Department’s first gay pride event. “Let us be a bridge to our straight allies.”
The Pentagon is not providing benefits to spouses of gay service members because federal law defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
The Pentagon chose Mr. Tanner and two other gays — a Marine officer and a West Point graduate — to talk about the military during the ban on open gays, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and about the months since its official repeal on Sept. 20.
“I happen to be gay, but more importantly, I’m a Marine,” said Capt. Matthew Phelps.
Capt. Phelps told of serving in Iraq with heterosexual officers who would gather Saturday nights to smoke cigars and talk about family back home. He said he had to remain quiet in the back of the room.
“By virtue of the fact that I wasn’t allowed to say anything, I was actually growing more distant from my unit,” he said. “We hear people talk about unit cohesion and how is the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ going to affect unit cohesion. I would argue it got better.”
Since enlisting in 2002, he risked being fired. But on June 15, he was at the White House “having champagne with the commander in chief,” he said.
Capt. Phelps‘ journey from being secretly gay to openly gay included taking his boyfriend to a Marine Corps ball in San Diego in November to celebrate the Corps’ 236th birthday.
Sue Fulton, who is on the board of visitors at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where she graduated in 1980, told a standing-room crowd in the Pentagon auditorium that removing the ban is “not even a speed bump” at the academy.
The former Army officer is now communications director for OutServe, an organization of active duty and veteran gays with chapters at bases around the world.
“This is an extraordinary and special day,” Ms. Fulton said. “A lot of people seemed surprised that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal went so smoothly.”
After recounting the closeted gays she met during her service, she said: “So many of us knew those gay and lesbian soldiers, and we knew at the end of the day this wouldn’t be hard.”
Jeh Johnson, the department’s general counsel, talked about the pre-repeal surveys and indoctrination during which some troops predicted open gays would lead to a loss of unit cohesion and morality.
“Based on our review, however, we conclude these concerns about gay and lesbian service members who are permitted to be open about their sexual orientation are exaggerated and not consistent with the reported experiences of many service members,” he said. “In communications with gay and lesbian current and former service members we repeatedly heard a patriotic desire to serve and defend the nation subject to the same rules as everyone else.”
The celebration was broadcast on the Pentagon cable channel with the title “LGBT Pride Month Event.” The initials stand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender.
The Pentagon has no figures on the number of gays in the ranks and does not count them.
See Related Watchwoman Posts—If Links don’t work, copy and paste URL
- Obama Most Pro-Homosexual President Ever–Appoints 190 to Government Positions
http://blog.beliefnet.com/watchwomanonthewall/?p=2623 - Pentagon holds first event to bring down America with Curses from God
http://blog.beliefnet.com/watchwomanonthewall/?p=16938 - Watch Panetta Proudly Ogle Sodomites/Lesbians/Fornicators/Sin-loving God-haters in Military! (Video)
http://blog.beliefnet.com/watchwomanonthewall/?p=16598
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO
“FILED UNDER”
CLICK ON ANY OF THOSE TOPICS TO TAKE YOU TO SIMILAR POSTINGS
~†~
Posted by Donna Calvin — Tuesday, June 26, 2012
~†~
Please share this Watchwoman post on your Facebook page, Linkedin, Google+1, Twitter to all your friends.
Please click “Like”, Share, and Leave Comments.
Visit Word Warriorette, a free Yahoo Group, and subscribe to be notified (one email a day)
of new posts on Watchwoman.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WordWarriorette/
DISCLAIMER: Beliefnet puts paid advertisements on “Watchwoman on the Wall” blog site including some that would never be approved of by the King James Bible, Pastor Ernie Sanders of Doers of the Word Church, What’s Right-What’s Left Radio Ministry, the Voice of the Christian Resistance, Geauga County Right to Life and Donna Calvin. We at www.WRWL.org do not condone, endorse, adhere to, practice or believe in many of the topics and some of what other bloggers promote or their religions at Beliefnet. However, Mrs. Calvin has no control of what Beliefnet displays. She blogs at Beliefnet because she is in the missionary field ministering to true believers posting articles and commentaries informing pro-life, conservative Christians of recent anti-Christian acts and hostile legislation to God’s Agenda and His Will for the world. Hopefully, unbelievers will read these along with the salvation message of Jesus Christ as written in the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, according to the King James Bible, and be saved. A missionary must go into the unbelievers’ territory to reach them. Her mission is to Proclaim Warning to a Nation that has forgotten their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the only Truth, the Life, and the only Way to the One God the Father.
Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/watchwomanonthewall/?p=4928
~†~
~END~