[VIDEO] Out Airman Will Raise Funds for HIV

via Advocate, by Michelle Garcia

A gay airman who came out to his family and the world the day "don't ask, don't tell" was officially repealed, announced that he will raise funds for HIV programs by joining the AIDS/LifeCycle this June.

Randy Phillips, a member of the U.S. Air Force stationed in Germany, will ride 545 miles with thousands of other participants from San Francisco to Los Angeles, with a personal goal of raising $10,000.

He's now asking for pledges from the big YouTube following that he's accumulated since coming out last year.

"There's so much stuff I could do with [this platform]. I could show you dumb kitten videos, I could try to sell you corny shirts that nobody wears, or I could try to do something good in the world," he said in a YouTube video.

Phillips said he was compelled to join the ride after speaking with filmmaker Ryan Yezak, who created the short clip "The Gay Rights Movement," which also went viral on YouTube earlier this month.

Phillips added, "I haven't been on a bicycle since high school — an actual pedal bicycle. I've never rode 545 miles, but I signed up to do the AIDS/LifeCycle."

Funds raised by AIDS/LifeCycle go directly to HIV services offered by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.






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Continuing Challenges for Gay Service Members

via Medill Reports, by JR Tungol

Gay servicemen and women say they still face discrimination and challenges as they mark Veterans Day Friday, the first since the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on Sept. 20.

Leonardo Lucio, a 39-year-old Navy reservist, came out standing at a podium addressing a crowd at the Center on Halsted, an LGBT resource center, the day DADT was repealed.

On Wednesday, Lucio received his photo for the national NOH8 Campaign, a photographic silent protest created by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska and partner Jeff Parshley in direct response to the passage of Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage.

In a message to fellow servicemen and women, Lucio said he “was happy and proud to have been used as a model for NOH8 (No Hate).”

Lucio, who has served in the Navy for more than 21 years, will be a guest speaker Friday for Veterans Day in Chicago with American Veterans for Equal Rights.

Despite the public support he has received, Lucio was accosted at work by a veteran who yelled a gay slur at him. Lucio is a supervisory claims assistant at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago.

“He humiliated me in front of my staff,” he said. “This is my reality.”

Last weekend Lucio attended his first drill weekend in Milwaukee, after re-enlisting for six more years.
“I could’ve retired last year, but I knew the repeal was coming and I wanted to know how it would feel to serve in the Navy openly,” he said. “I came out to my roommate. I said, ‘I’m not married. I have a partner. I’m gay,’ and he said ‘it’s cool.’”

But homophobic jokes still linger. Two straight servicemen joked about taking each other to the Navy ball because of the repeal. Lucio stayed quiet.

“This is the bottom line,” he said. “I’ve – we’ve, my partner and I – have been programmed and trained to suppress, hide and lie, that it’s still hard to speak out sometimes.”

The repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act is necessary so gay servicemen and women have the same rights married personnel have, including family housing allowance and the ability to transfer bases together, Lucio said.

“We’re still second-class citizens,” he said. “The end of DADT is a big step but a small step at the same time.”

James Darby, president of the Chicago chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights and the only gay member of the Advisory Council of Veteran Affairs for the city, was the man Lucio approached to come out publicly.

Darby, an 80-year-old retired South Side teacher and Korean War veteran thought Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would never be repealed.

“The change doesn’t affect veterans as much as it does active servicemen,” Darby said. “Now comes DOMA. Then gay people in the military can get most of their rights and federal benefits will be available to everyone – including me.”

AVER’s mission is to advocate and speak for closeted U.S. personnel. Darby said that there are veterans who are still afraid of coming out because they think their pensions might be taken away.

This Veterans Day celebration is particularly resonant for Darby because it will be the first time AVER will have an out, active service member speak.

Lucio, who grew up in Chicago Heights with Allen Schindler, the 22-year-old sailor who gained national attention for being brutally murdered by two shipmates in 1992, said his involvement with AVER and OutServe, an advocacy group for gay military personnel, is what brings him joy.

“I didn’t think at first I would be a role-model,” Lucio said. “Now, I cannot get enough and I cannot say enough. After 21 years, I need to be an example for the younger soldiers – I need to be brave.”


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Officer X No More

via Battleland, by Karl Johnson

What a fascinating time to be a gay man in the U.S. military. This time last year, I was sure the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” (DADT) policy was here to stay for the next 2 to 3 years.

These initial words from my first post on Battleland are as true today as they were when I first Photoshopped a hastily-taken picture from my iPad, and created an iconic silhouette.

As of today, Officer X is no more. With a Velcro riiiip I can now remove that name tape from the chest of my proverbial blogger flight suit and replace it with one that says “Karl Johnson”.

A 25 year old -- who flies U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo jets and has a degree in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University -- may seem like an unlikely candidate to blog for TIME, or wear the hat of an activist.

At first the idea of writing for Battleland was nothing short of intimidating, but the decision of whether or not to accept was easy: the opportunity to give a voice to those of us who have been voiceless for years, as a matter of federal law, was too good to pass up.

Being the mind behind the OX silhouette has been an eye-opening experience. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading every comment, every email, every tweet, and trying my best to keep up with the responses. My only regret in this whole process is that I didn't start sooner.

At the moment this blog goes live I will be walking out my front door to start my first day at the squadron out of the closet. Around that same time the article I wrote in this week's print edition of TIME magazine will hit the stands.

I don't know how long it will take for this tale to get back to me, or how I will react when finally confronted. That uncertainty doesn't scare me any more.

 It's time to man up and do as I had promised myself in May when I started blogging: lead from the front. Yup, it's still a fascinating time to be a gay man in the U.S. military.

The end to 'don't ask, don't tell' follows shifting public attitudes

via The Monitor, By Brad Knickerbocker

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” officially comes to end September 20. And while the controversial ban on gay men and women serving openly in the US military no doubt will continue to be the subject of social and political debate, the change in policy comes as public attitudes have shifted dramatically since DADT came into force 18 years ago.

Many gay elected officials, newscasters, sports figures, and other prominent public figures no longer feel the need to be closeted. Six states now allow same-sex marriages. And public attitudes toward LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Americans have moved toward greater tolerance – particularly among younger generations.

Between 1996 and 2011, according to Gallup, the percentage of those polled who think marriages between same-sex couples “should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages” has doubled to 53 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage that thinks such marriages should not be valid has dropped from 68 percent to 45 percent


Read more. 

Monday Morning Perk-Up [Navy Veneral Disease PSA]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Who's That Queer? [Siegfried Sassoon]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Siegfried Sassoon was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I, but later won acclaim for his prose work. The novel, Regeneration, by Pat Barker, is a fictionalized account of this period in Sassoon's life, and was made into a film starring Jonathan Pryce as W H R Rivers, the psychiatrist responsible for Sassoon's 'recovery'. Rivers became a kind of surrogate father to the troubled young man, and his sudden death in 1922 was a major blow to Sassoon.


After serving in World War I, Sassoon became a pacifist. Meanwhile, he was beginning to practice his homosexuality more openly, embarking on an affair with the artist, Gabriel Atkin. He also had a succession of love affairs with men, including the actor Ivor Novello; Novello's former lover, the actor Glen Byam Shaw; German aristocrat Prince Philipp of Hesse; the writer Beverley Nichols; and Stephen Tennant.

He remains an enigmatic figure in gay history: in his younger years homosexual but later, he lived comfortably as a conservative, religious, aristocratic heterosexual.

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'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Is Bad Health Policy

via Medical News, by Michael Smith

The military "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members is not only a constitutional and legal issue -- it also has serious health implications, an epidemiologist claims.

The policy often means that sexually transmitted infections go undiagnosed and service members and their partners are untreated, Kenneth Katz, MD, of San Diego State University, wrote in a Perspective piece published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

And messages aimed at preventing HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases -- and tailored for gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members -- are not transmitted, Katz argued.

"In very real ways," Katz wrote, the policy threatens the health of service members as well as the community at large, and may even have an impact on the ability of the service as a whole to respond to combat missions.

Katz cited the case of a gay serviceman who came to his municipal STD clinic in San Diego County complaining of rectal pain and discharge. The diagnosis was rectal gonorrhea, which was treated according to CDC guidelines with an intramuscular injection of 125 mg of ceftriaxone (Rocephin) along with one gram of oral azithromycin (Zithromax) for empirical treatment of chlamydia.
But, Katz noted, the man had had ready access -- for free -- to military clinics.

He said he chose the municipal clinic because he would have felt uncomfortable discussing his sexual behavior with a military doctor.

Katz reported that, in 2002, nearly one in 10 clients of a gay men's health clinic in San Diego were sailors on active duty, which is consistent with his own experience.

But there are an estimated 66,000 gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in the military, or about 2.2% of the total, he noted. "How many of them have no access to nonmilitary medical care?" Katz wrote. "How many simply don't seek it?"

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GAYS OKAY - Pentagon Study Shows Majority Of Troops Accepting Of Gays In Military

via HuffPo

An internal Pentagon study has found that most U.S. troops and their families don't care whether gays are allowed to serve openly and think the policy of "don't ask, don't tell" could be done away with, according to officials familiar with its findings.

 Read it.

Who's That Queer? [Eric Alva]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva was the first American wounded, losing his leg in the war in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart and received a medical discharge from the military. After being honorably discharged, Alva came out as gay, and has been one of the most vocal veterans to speak out against the military's "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy.

Having survived a war injury, Alva felt he’d been given a second chance at life. He discovered a new calling. “I had to use my voice,” he says. “I had fought and nearly died to secure rights for others that I was not free to enjoy. I had proudly served a country that was not proud of me.”

In 2003, Alva received the Heroes and Heritage Award from La Raza. People magazine honored him with the Heroes Among Us Award (2004). He received the Patriot Award from the city of San Antonio (2004), and the Public Citizen Award from the National Association of Social Workers (2008).

Alva earned a Bachelor of Social Work in 2008, and is studying for a master’s degree in that field. He lives in San Antonio with his long-term partner, Darrell Parsons.

Who's That Queer [Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Margarethe "Grethe" Cammermeyer (born March 24, 1942) is a former colonel in the Washington National Guard and a gay rights activist.


Born in Oslo, Norway, she became a United States citizen in 1960. In 1961 she joined the Army Student Nurse Program. She received a B.S. in Nursing in 1963 from the University of Maryland. She furthered her education at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, earning a master's (1976) and Ph.D. (1991) from the School of Nursing.

She met her partner, Diane Divelbess, in 1988, when she was 46 — after she had ended a 15-year marriage to a man and had four sons.

In 1989, in response to a question during a routine security clearance interview, she disclosed that she is a lesbian. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy was not yet in effect at the time, and the National Guard began military discharge proceedings against her. On June 11, 1992, she was honorably discharged from the military. Cammermeyer filed a lawsuit against the decision in civil court. In June 1994, Judge Thomas Zilly of the federal district court in Seattle ruled her discharge, and the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military, unconstitutional. She returned to the National Guard and served as one of the few officially accepted openly gay or lesbian people in the military until her retirement in 1997.

A television movie about Cammermeyer's story, Serving in Silence, was made in 1995, with Glenn Close starring as Cammermeyer. Its content was largely taken from Cammermeyer's autobiography of the same name.

Read the rest at Wikipedia

Dignity and Respect for All Except..............

Check out the Army's new racially diverse comic book that lays out, step by step, how the Army discriminates against the gays. Anyone else see the irony in this? Thanks for the lead Queerty!

Who's That Queer [Leonard Matlovich]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was a Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He fought the US military in 1975 for the right to serve as an openly gay man.

Not long after he enlisted, the United States increased military action in Vietnam. Matlovich volunteered for service in Vietnam and served three tours of duty. He was seriously wounded when he stepped on a land mine in Da Nang.

While stationed in Florida near Fort Walton Beach, he began frequenting gay bars in nearby Pensacola. He came out to his friends, but continued to conceal the fact from his commanding officer. Matlovich gradually came to believe that the discrimination faced by African Americans was similar to the persecution that homosexuals endured; it became a civil rights issue. When he was 30, Matlovich slept with another man for the first time. Unwilling to put his career on the line in the early 1970s, he would sometimes refer to himself as a 'minority' hinting at his new lifestyle.

Read the rest at Gay for Today.

Monday Morning Perk-Up [Troops do GaGa]

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Dems move forward with DADT Repeal

Via HuffPo -

Congressional negotiators and White House officials are moving forward with plans to add the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell to the upcoming defense authorization bill, Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post.

In Congress, members are being whipped to ensure that the votes will be there for passage, should the legislation be placed in the bill. At this juncture, aides say, the prospects look good. Meanwhile, a source close to the White House says the president has instructed the Defense Department that he believes the repeal of DADT should be placed in the authorization bill.

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Will Obama deliver on his pledge to end DADT?

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: Repeal DADT Now!

Check out New York's junior senator imploring Obama and Congress to move on Don't Ask, Don't Tell at HuffPo.

Since 1994, almost 13,000 gay servicemen and women have been discharged from the military based not on their performance but on their sexual orientation. In 2009 alone, we've had more than 400 of our brave men and women leave the military under Don't Ask Don't Tell. This is simply unacceptable. It is time to repeal this outdated and immoral policy once and for all and end the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly and honestly in our armed forces.

To that end, I've secured the commitment from Senator Carl Levin, Chair of the Armed Services Committee, to hold the first hearing on the policy since it began 16 years ago. Chairman Levin expects to hold the hearing soon and it's my hope that it will be instrumental in demonstrating the level of support that exists for repeal not only throughout the country -- where polls consistently indicate that solid majorities oppose the policy -- but within the military itself.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-kirsten-gillibrand/the-right-time-to-repeal_b_310352.html?alacarte=1

Read the rest at HuffPo.

We Know What You Did Last Summer Wackenhut

And, um, regular ole gays serving openly in the military is bad for morale how?

Check this out, via Gawker

Wonder what it's like to guard State Department facilities in Kabul? In photos first published by Gawker, security contractors get their kicks peeing on one another, simulating anal sex, doing "butt shots," and "eating potato chips out of ass cracks."

These photos were provided to us by the Project on Government Oversight, which has just written a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detailing its investigation into the "Lord of the Flies environment" that has overtaken the private contractors who guard State Department employees in Kabul, Afghanistan. According to POGO, employees of ArmorGroup North America—a unit of contracting giant Wackenhut—get their jollies off by "deviant hazing [that] has created a climate of fear and coercion, with those who declined to participate often ridiculed, humiliated, demoted, or even fired."

Read, and see, the rest.

Oh, before you go, take a look below...

Chicago Event to Honor Gay Vets

The Tribune is reporting that Chicago's Commission on Human Relations will honor gay military veterans at an event in downtown Chicago. Organizers say the event is the country's only municipally sponsored military salute to gay veterans. "With Liberty and Justice for All" will be held on Aug. 5 at Richard J. Daley Plaza.

U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley is slated as a featured speaker. He has co-sponsored a bill that would repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the U.S. Military's ban on openly gay service members.

The keynote speaker is a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel and the U.S. Navy Diversity Senior Advisory Group. Luke Visconti was on active duty as a naval aviator and commissioned officer with the Navy from 1982 to 1990, and in the reserves until 1992.

A Look at the Gay Rights Movement Beyond Marriage and the Military

Forty years after Stonewall, where is the gay rights movement headed? What does the focus on marriage equality mean for the goals of gay liberation? We speak with activist, writer and historian, Lisa Duggan. “It remains to be seen whether a call for full civil equality can produce mass mobilization, or whether it might soon be reduced to a call for gay marriage only, or worse, to the production of just another commercially sponsored gay parade,” Duggan writes. “The devil will be in the details, which will be settled in the weeks to come.”

via Democracy Now! - includes video and transcript.

Excerpt:

If you look at what the majority of LBGTQ people need, it’s healthcare, it’s retirement benefits, it’s childcare, it’s the things that cut across constituencies.

And if we could focus on those things that most of us need and have in common with others, we might be able to produce a kind of coalition politics that would be less isolating for the gay movement. And queer issues could be defined expansively and produce alliances with, say, the AARP, who certainly has an interest in getting some recognitions for Golden Girl households, right?

Read,see, hear the rest.

Who's that Queer?

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Oliver "Billy" Sipple was a decorated Marine and Vietnam veteran widely known for saving the life of President Gerald Ford during an assassination attempt in San Francisco on September 22, 1975. The subsequent public revelation that Sipple was gay turned the news story into a torch for gay activists.

Sipple was part of a crowd of about 3,000 people who had gathered outside San Francisco's St. Francis to see President Ford on September 22, 1975.

Ford, just emerging from the building, was vulnerable despite heavy security protection. Sipple noticed a woman next to him had pulled and leveled a .38-caliber pistol at Ford as he headed to his limousine. Reacting instinctively, Sipple lunged at the shooter, Sarah Jane Moore, just as her finger squeezed the trigger. While the gun did go off, the impact was enough to deflect her aim and cause the bullet to veer wide of its mark. The bullet hit John Ludwig, a 42-year-old taxi driver. Ludwig survived.

Despite his wishes, gay activist Harvey Milk publicly proclaimed Sipple a 'gay hero' and said his act 'will help break the stereotype of homosexuals'. Gay liberation groups petitioned local media to give Sipple his due as a gay hero. Then columnist Herb Caen published the private side of the former Marine's story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Six other papers ran the column as well. After discovering her son's secret, Sipple's mother reacted to the knowledge of her son's sexual orientation by cutting off contact with him. Sipple's mother was reportedly harassed by her neighbours. When her son called to talk to her, she hung up on him. According to a 2006 Washington Post article, Sipple went through a period of estrangement with his parents, but the family later reconciled with his sexual orientation.

Sipple's mental and physical health sharply declined over the years. He drank heavily, gained weight, was fitted with a pacemaker, became paranoid and suicidal. On 2 February 1989, he was found dead in his bed, at the age of forty-seven. Earlier that day, Sipple had visited a friend and said he had been turned away by the Veterans' Administration hospital where he went concerning his difficulty in breathing.

Sources: wikipedia.org, gayfortoday.blogspot.com