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| Eric Alva, a retired Marine who lost his leg in the Iraq war, is speaking out against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ (Blade photo by Henry Linser) |
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Legislation to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is the first of several gay-related bills expected to materialize this year in Congress.
During an event last week at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in Washington, leading activists said a bill barring employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, as well as a hate crimes measure, also are expected this session.
HRC President Joe Solmonese said he’s optimistic the Employment Non-Discrimination Act will pass, in part because “the power of corporate America is with us now.” A vote on the bill, which has not yet been introduced, is expected this fall.
Solmonese said a vote on a forthcoming hate crimes bill, which would give the federal government authority to prosecute hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity, could come in the spring.
Those predictions echoed a timeline announced last month by Bill Murat, chief of staff to lesbian Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting.
C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said at the HRC event, sponsored by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, that it could take longer to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and pass the Uniting American Families Act, a bill that would allow gay Americans to sponsor their partner for citizenship.
“We have a harder fight on the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and immigration bills,” he said. “It takes time, it takes education.”
Osburn later said that while Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) will lead House efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” there’s no champion yet for a companion bill in the Senate.
“We’re talking to a lot of people in the Senate who are interested in being the lead on this, and we know that there’s a lot of interest in the Senate,” he said. “But you’ll need to stay tuned. Our goal is to have something introduced this year in the Senate.”
JOSHUA LYNSEN & LOU CHIBBARO JR. |
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOSHUA LYNSEN COMMENTS
 
It was a late autumn evening when Eric Alva, now a retired Marine staff sergeant and the first U.S. service member injured in the Iraq war, decided to come out as gay.
The decision, Alva said, came after his partner noted Alva lost his right leg while defending freedoms neither man could fully enjoy.
Alva said the words his partner spoke then in their San Antonio, Texas, home have stayed with him.
“Look at the rights that people are being denied,” Alva recalled his partner saying. “And look at the rights that you are fighting for. Look at the rights that you put your life on the line for, for this country. And yet you don’t get any of them.
“He made me raise my eyebrows. Like, ‘Oh my God, you’re right.’ I’m just a second-class citizen who isn’t going to get anything unless I say something. And I’m in a position to do something.”
That’s why Alva — who was christened the war’s first hero and met President Bush after he was injured by a land mine in March 2003 — came out as gay publicly on Wednesday.
“There are certain things you do in life at a certain time and a certain place,” he told the Blade. “In my heart, I know this is the right time.”
Alva now plans to work with Human Rights Campaign as part of the organization’s renewed effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which bars gays from serving openly in the armed forces.
Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) introduced a bill Wednesday backed by more than 100 other House members to repeal the 13-year-old policy. A companion Senate bill is expected later this year.
“We know that there’s no place in this country for discrimination, whether it’s based on race, creed or sexual orientation,” he said. “And there’s no place for institutional discrimination codified in the federal statutes.”
‘Country has changed’
Gay activists consider Meehan’s bill, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, a key priority for the 110th Congress.
C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization that backs Meehan’s bill, said public opinion favors ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
A poll last year by the Pew Research Center found 60 percent of Americans think gays should be allowed to serve openly. In a separate poll last year of 545 soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 73 percent of troops said they were comfortable interacting with gay service members.
“The country has changed, the military has changed,” Osburn said, “and now it’s time for Congress to change.”
But it’s unclear how Congress will react. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has indicated she supports the repeal, but a spokesperson for Pelosi said, “It’s hard to say where things are going.”
And efforts to repeal the policy could meet fierce conservative resistance.
Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth, said Meehan’s bill could “activate the grassroots conservative movement.”
“It’s the gay side that has been working so hard to change hearts and minds, whereas the conservative side has not been that engaged,” he said. “But I think that will quickly change.”
Nonetheless, Meehan, who chairs a House Armed Services subcommittee and aims for a hearing on his bill by May, said momentum to repeal the policy “is clearly on our side.”
“I don’t have any doubt that it’s just a matter of time,” he said, “and the people who are on the other side are simply on the wrong side of history.”
‘He’s still Eric’
As activists work to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Alva said Americans should support domestically the same ideals the nation is touting in Iraq.
“It’s an opportunity to really test the guidelines of what everybody always talks about in this country,” he said. “Everybody always preaches that everybody’s equal in this country — everybody’s treated the same. We’re really not. I mean, we’re not. This would be a test. If you feel that we’re the same, then repeal the policy. Let people serve openly in the military.”
Alva, who joined the Marines in 1990 at age 19, said being closeted had an adverse affect on him.
“On a professional level, no, because I knew I had a job to do,” he said. “On a personal level, in some ways, yes, because it was hard for me to live sometimes knowing that I was alone or that I couldn’t be open about who I wanted to date.”
Although he became accustomed to concealing his identity, Alva said he came out to several Marines during his 13 years in the armed forces. He was never questioned, though, or reprimanded for lying about his ...
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