Fighting to Serve My Country
David Hall, a plaintiff in Cook v. Rumsfeld, recently joined the SLDN team as a development assistant. Below, he shares his perspective on SLDN's work and life as a former service member.
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This is my first blog entry as the new “kid on the block” at SLDN. But as a former client and a plaintiff in the Cook vs. Rumsfield lawsuit I have a very different perspective of SLDN as a workplace.
I enjoy everyday I come into the SLDN office for work and couldn’t be happier to be part of this awesome team. But in reality, I shouldn’t be here! I should be stationed at some Air Force base or deployed somewhere in the world helping to defend our country. Instead of business attire I should be putting on a flight suit every morning.
When I joined the Air Force in 1996, I never would have guessed I would have to fight to serve my country. I joined so I would have the opportunity to serve my country and defend the freedoms we have come to cherish as a nation. But after being discharged under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, I have a new fight. A fight to ensure gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans has the Freedom to Serve.
Having just recently moved to Washington DC from Alaska I knew there was one place I was hoping to work. I am grateful for the opportunity to join SLDN and help them with their continued fight with this outrageous law. This law not only hurts the country as a whole but destroys lives of honorable Americans who only want to serve their country.
As much as I enjoy working with this great group of professionals, I am looking forward to the day when I get to leave SLDN. It will be the day that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law is repealed by Congress or found unconstitutional by the courts. Hopefully at this time I will go back to my previous career of serving my country.
I am lucky as one out of the ten thousand Americans who have been affected by this law; I get to come to work everyday and make a difference. Not all of us can work at SLDN but we all can make a difference. We can stand up for the 65,000 active duty gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans and let them know we are proud of them for the hard work they are doing for our country.
-David Hall
____________
This is my first blog entry as the new “kid on the block” at SLDN. But as a former client and a plaintiff in the Cook vs. Rumsfield lawsuit I have a very different perspective of SLDN as a workplace.
I enjoy everyday I come into the SLDN office for work and couldn’t be happier to be part of this awesome team. But in reality, I shouldn’t be here! I should be stationed at some Air Force base or deployed somewhere in the world helping to defend our country. Instead of business attire I should be putting on a flight suit every morning.
When I joined the Air Force in 1996, I never would have guessed I would have to fight to serve my country. I joined so I would have the opportunity to serve my country and defend the freedoms we have come to cherish as a nation. But after being discharged under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, I have a new fight. A fight to ensure gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans has the Freedom to Serve.
Having just recently moved to Washington DC from Alaska I knew there was one place I was hoping to work. I am grateful for the opportunity to join SLDN and help them with their continued fight with this outrageous law. This law not only hurts the country as a whole but destroys lives of honorable Americans who only want to serve their country.
As much as I enjoy working with this great group of professionals, I am looking forward to the day when I get to leave SLDN. It will be the day that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law is repealed by Congress or found unconstitutional by the courts. Hopefully at this time I will go back to my previous career of serving my country.
I am lucky as one out of the ten thousand Americans who have been affected by this law; I get to come to work everyday and make a difference. Not all of us can work at SLDN but we all can make a difference. We can stand up for the 65,000 active duty gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans and let them know we are proud of them for the hard work they are doing for our country.
-David Hall
posted by SLDN at
11:46 AM
1 Comments:
Thanks for the battle that you are undergoing for all of us who are serving on active duty but have to hide our orientation. I am a married bisexual Captain serving in Iraq.
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