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Georgia U.S. Senate Candidates Tell Positions on Gays in the Military

There are five Democratic candidates vying to challenge Sen. Saxby Chambliss in the general election this fall. In a debate aired earlier today on WSB-TV, LGBT issues came up only in a reference to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. In a year that saw Senate debate on Hate Crimes legislation and the Employment Nondescrimination Act (ENDA), not to mention gay marriage in California, I would have expected gay and lesbian issues to be a more prominent topic for debate. But what with two wars, a tanking economy, the mortgage mess, and the expense of tanking up with $4.00-plus gasoline, there was plenty else to discuss.

In the debate, three of the five candidates took a strong stand against the ban on gays serving openly in the military. Former State Rep. Jim Martin, a Vietnam veteran, made one of the most direct statements on the ban, saying that the policy was misguided to begin with. Candidate Rand Knight Ph.D., an Atlanta businessman, also said the ban should be lifted. Also in agreement: Josh Lanier, who pointed out that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has hurt our national security. He used the discharge of several gay Arabic linguists during wars in Arabic nations as a prime example. Mr. Lanier, a retired businessman from Statesboro, is a Vietnam veteran.

Less supportive were former investigative TV reporter Dale Cardwell, who gave a confusing answer that being gay in the military was not the issue, but rather sexual impropriety. He could be given the benefit of the doubt that he meant sexual impropriety by soldiers whether gay or straight. Or he could have been implying that gays are sexually promiscuous. Either way, his answer made me a little uncomfortable, especially when he added that the impact of GLBT servicemen and women on the other soldiers in the field needed to be studied. Mr. Cardwell, it already has.

Least supportive of all was controversial DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones. After a generic statement on non-descrimination, he ended his answer by saying he supports Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Mr. Jones also indicated that he voted for George W. Bush twice, which for me calls into question his candidacy as a Democrat as well as his overall judgement.

Feeling less than informed about the candidates’ positions on GLBT issues, I researched for any endorsements by GLBT political groups and coverage of the campaigns by the media. There has been virtual radio silence on this Democratic primary, leaving me feeling frustrated and uninformed. I then took a look at each candidate’s Website and contacted each campaign to get more clarification on their stands. More on what I learned will be blogged in my next post.

Ode to Onge

Andrea Capozzi, a 39-year-old Atlanta resident, Life University graduate and a successful Midtown chiropractor, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. On Tuesday, February 26, doctors told Andrea’s family that she had less than seven days to live. As of this writing, she is still alive, almost seven weeks later. She is living in a hospice facility back home in New Jersey, when her father moved her after the doctors at Atlanta’s Grady Hospital had diagnosed the Ovarian cancer that had spread to her brain. Her tenacity is surely testament to her focus on health. A benefit has been scheduled for next Sunday, April 20 from 1 until 8 p.m. at Calavino’s in Decatur to raise money for medical expenses. Ironically, but not surprisingly in this country’s woefully inadequate healthcare system, Andrea is a healthcare professional with no health insurance.

When I first visited Loving Hands Family Chiropractic, Andrea Capozzi had just completed chiropractic school. She took x-rays, evaluated the black-and-white view of my aching back, and explained chiropractic care to me in an attentive, engaged manner that I have rarely encountered with healthcare professionals. Endless repetition can make such orientations more often rote than not. But not with Andrea, known affectionately as Onge. I had never been to a chiropractor before. My first impression of one was in the form of a young, beautiful, fellow lesbian with tremendous charisma, an ever-present smile and a genuine enthusiasm for her profession. Now well more than a decade later, I sit here wondering what I can say that would not seem a cliche. What can you say when someone you’ve known for the majority of your adult life, someone who is younger than you, someone who provided care to you, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer?

When I first met Onge all those years ago, she was literally fresh out of school. She did not personally adjust me until some time later, after she had received her license following exams. My first adjustments were from her then partner, Natalie Topeka, an equally charismatic woman of great wit and what sometimes seems a miraculous talent for her work. After the license to practice arrived, I was adjusted by whichever partner was available when I showed up. For the first couple of years, I went to Loving Hands twice almost every week. I wasn’t in particularly poor health. Most of my visits were for wellness care, or for relief from a cold. I did have off-and-on back pain, mostly because I have never understood that gravity applies to me. The truth is many of my visits were as much about seeing Natalie and Onge as about the adjustments. I became, and still am, a true believer in chiropractic care. But I wonder if Andrea’s ever-present smile and the warm hug that came after every adjustment were as healing as any of the twists and turns of my spine. Natalie’s pranks at Halloween and playful Easter-egg hunts also had entertainment value.

These brief encounters continued for years. I never became close personal friends with either Andrea or Natalie. We met for pizza a time or two. They came to a pool party at my old place in Stone Mountain. I played on the Loving Hands softball team the summer my father was dying in 1996. I was an emotional rollercoaster during my father’s struggle with cancer, and not always pleasant to be around on the Softball Country Club fields, but those games were a welcome relief, a moment of play, in an otherwise deadly serious time of my life.

I eventually stopped going to Loving Hands Chiropractic about a year after Natalie and Andrea ended their partnership and Natalie left the practice. I was healthy and was traveling a lot with my work, so I had cut my chiropractic visits back to every couple or three weeks in my last years as a patient there. I ran into Onge regularly at clubs and events around town after that, and always got that bright smile and warm hug. My last conversation with her was shortly after she closed the Loving Hands office on Lavista Road and moved her practice to Midtown.

When I heard the news of Andrea’s cancer in mid-March, I was profoundly shocked and saddened. My perspective, as a casual friend and former patient, surely pales in comparison to the shock and sadness and grief being endured by her family, her close friends, and her partner–who is now separated from Onge by her duties with the U.S. Navy. Thanks to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Onge does not have her partner by her side.  LGBT servicemembers do not have the option to request hardship leave to be with a dying partner.  But that is more pain and frustration than I can write about in one sitting.

I have been shaken by the news of Andrea’s illness. I’ve said prayers, lit a candle, directed energy toward New Jersey. I have felt a little strange, too, that I have had such a profound reaction to the illness of one of my doctors, only a very casual friend. Then, a very good friend suggested to me that because Onge was my caregiver, my healer, there is naturally a part of her that is connected with me. I guess the care that Onge is giving now is the knowledge that all of our encounters with others in this life have meaning. Our care for others, our compassion for their pain and struggles, our work to improve their condition–whether that condition is physical, emotional or spiritual–has a profound and lasting effect on their lives. Onge’s life and work have enriched my life. I wish I knew of some way to give back to her now.

What George Bush Doesn’t Know About Brian Muller

George Bush doesn’t know Brian Muller, but Brian knows George, rather intimately. Brian has been to Bush’s Crawford, Texas house many times when George wasn’t around. Brian searched everything that entered the ranch, from food to packages. Following the President outside the ranch, which is of course always guarded, Brian made sure that anywhere George went was safe. He looked behind artwork in restaurants. He examined the pews at church. He touched all the chairs and telephones and files in conference rooms.

If the President knew about Brian, he would likely be alarmed to know that he had been watched so closely, because Brian is a gay man. As a soldier who wasn’t asked, and didn’t tell—at least until the end—Brian kept his orientation under wraps while he went about his mission to uncover any dangers in Crawford, so that George could safely continue his reign of discrimination and exclusion, using his power to deny gay Americans basic rights at every opportunity.

Brian served in secrecy in the U.S. Army for eight years. Before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell put an end to his military service, he put his life on the line every day as a bomb technician. He went to Bosnia three times. He was in one of the early waves of soldiers who went into Afghanistan in the late fall of 2001, just a couple of months following the tragedy on September 11. In Afghanistan, Brian’s unit searched for old Soviet munitions that had been left behind after Russia’s war effort there. What they found they destroyed, to prevent the bombs and chemicals and guns from ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists. They hiked high into the Afghan mountains and went into the infamous caves. More than once, they would evacuate small villages and destroy a cave full of unexploded shells.

In Afghanistan, Brian risked his life for his fellow soldiers and for ordinary Afghanis, even though it was often hard to tell which locals were innocent civilians and which were plotting against America. When a young Afghani boy rode a bicycle up to a group of soldiers, got off and walked away, Brian was the one who rushed to the bike and diffused the IED, at risk to his own life and limb, saving his fellow soldiers from becoming another on the Pentagon’s list of Americans killed in service to their country.

Among the lethal remnants the Soviets left behind were tanks of fuel air explosive. The Americans came in to remove the tanks, hoping to prevent the locals from killing themselves out of ignorance of the volatile nature of the high explosive liquid rounds in the tanks. The Afghanis would excavate high explosives out of abandoned, unexploded bombs to heat their homes and cook their families’ meals.

While loading the tanks on military transport, one tipped and spilled the explosive on Brian. He still fights a skin condition that resulted from the accident, five years after being kicked out of the Army for being gay. He struggled to get treatment from the VA. Apparently Brian’s injury was less deserving of healthcare because his skin is stretched across a gay man’s body.

After his tour of duty in Afghanistan, Brian was assigned to the Presidential detail with the Secret Service back in the states. His job was to clear deliveries to the Crawford estate and secure other locations of any danger before the President could enter. The technique for ensuring an area is safe for our leaders is alarmingly simple. It’s called “find or function.” Soldiers and agents touch and move everything. Any hidden explosives are either noticed and diffused, or they are touched and detonated. Anything Brian examined would either be deemed harmless or could be the last thing Brian touched before dying for a man who does not value Brian’s service.

Brian provided the same service to Vice President Cheney, traveling with him overseas to protect him in airport hangers, at press conferences and during speeches. Mr. Cheney doesn’t know that one young gay man risked his life to protect him, even though Cheney believes it’s okay for his daughter to be gay, but sits by passively as his party works to ensure that it’s not okay for the sons and daughters of other Americans to enjoy the same tolerance.

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Honor All Veterans–Including Gay Veterans

The Georgia Veterans Day Parade Association of Atlanta will honor American veterans tomorrow, unless those veterans happen to be against the war in Iraq and/or queer. The Atlanta Progressive News reports that the parade association initially denied applications to participate from The Veterans for Peace Chapter 125 (VFP) and American Veterans for Equal Rights Georgia (AVER), a national Veterans Service Organization created by and for LGBT veterans and service members. AVER is the only queer-focused organization recognized by the Veterans Administration, according to their Website.

The story is confirmed by a press release issued yesterday by VFP Greater Atlanta Chapter 125.

The parade association then later said that both groups can march but cannot display any messages of peace (by VFP), or exhibit any “public displays of affection” (in the case of AVER).

Apparently, the powers behind Atlanta’s Veterans Day Parade are willing to honor only those troops not threatened by the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. And even if you’ve served your country in the armed forces, you should not be recognized unless you agree with Bush Administration policy on the war. Those who put themselves in harm’s way to fight for freedom, that lofty American ideal for which our President believes the terrorists “hate us for,” should be rewarded with the right to exercise those freedoms themselves. And that should include freedom of speech, to object to an unnecessary war that has costs thousands of lives, strained our military, racked up billions in debt and damaged America’s reputation around the world. And it should include the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, even if it happens to be a gay life.

To learn more about how you can support and honor LGBT veterans and currently-serving troops, visit AVER and the Servicemember’s Legal Defense Network.

‘Faith In America’ Calls for Repeal of DADT

Faith in America, Inc., an advocacy organization fighting to end “bigotry disguised as religious truth” toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons, is calling for an immediate repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and the passage of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (HR1246)through Congress.

The press release, issued on October 23rd by the organizations executive director Jimmy Creech went on to say, “General Peter Pace recently declared homosexuality to be “immoral,” based on his religious upbringing. Such misguided denunciations in the name of God are not new. In the past, slavery and racial segregation were said to be “ordained by God” and women were denied equality with men because “God made them to be man’s helpmate, not man’s equal.” The Bible, it was claimed, said so.”

“[This]is a powerful statement just released by “Faith in America” and Jimmy Creech regarding the repeal of DA/DT,” said retired Army Colonel Paul Dodd, a member of SLDN’s Military Advisory Council. “I am extremely grateful to Jimmy and his wonderful organization for issuing this statement, and for their bold and courageous initiatives on behalf of the entire lgbt community.”

You can read more about Faith In America and their efforts on their website here.

-Jason Knight

Posts from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network are published via RSS from SLDN’s From the Frontlines. Support SLDN here.

Washington Post: Maintaining Ban is Shortsighted & Unjust

This morning’s Washington Post includes an editorial from the paper calling for repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The Post still holds the record for the most pro-repeal editorials; the paper’s editorial board has demanded an end to the law more than a dozen times. (Just a few of the other Post editorials can be found here, here, here and here.)

Responding to the recent story about the military posting recruitment ads on an LGBT website, The Post writes that, “Since 1993, more than 11,000 people have been discharged from the services because of their homosexuality. Of those, 800 were in positions deemed ‘mission-critical’ by the Pentagon. Those would be combat engineers, medical professionals and linguists (58 of whom spoke Arabic) — the very people the Army, Navy and Air Force were looking for when their job postings showed up on GLEE.com, which stands for Gay, Lesbian & Everyone Else.”

“The whole sorry episode,” the paper concludes, “highlights the absurdity of the ban on openly gay people in the military. Israel, Australia, Britain and 21 other countries have no problem with gays and lesbians serving openly in their armed forces. With its military stretched to the breaking point, the United States should follow their wise lead. That it doesn’t is as shortsighted as it is unjust.”

We couldn’t agree more.

You can send a letter to the editor applauding this morning’s editorial by emailing letters@washpost.com.

- Steve Ralls

Posts from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network are published via RSS from SLDN’s From the Frontlines.

Support SLDN here.