Deployments

SLDN's Deputy Director for Policy, Sharon Alexander, shares with us her letter to NPR regarding a recent segment on Fort Hood soldiers and their families saying their goodbyes before deploying to Iraq.

I want to thank Renee Montagne for her Tuesday coverage of the 1st Cavalry’s deployment to Iraq. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I listened to the interviews with the deploying officers and non-commissioned officers of the 1st Cav and their families. As a veteran and the wife of a veteran, I remember well the pain of saying goodbye for long periods of time.

But as painful as these deployment send-offs are, imagine how much more painful still it is when your loved ones cannot be present to send you off to war. Please remember in your coverage of this war, that an estimated 65,000 American service members live and serve in a very different world; those service members are gay and lesbian Americans. Same-sex partners and spouses are not recognized as family to the service members they love. They do not have access to come on base for send off or homecoming festivities, and a hug or kiss good-bye from a deploying service member to his or her same-sex loved one is grounds for discharge from the Armed Forces for violation of the so-called “homosexual conduct policy.”

The fact that in 2006 we still treat some Americans as second class citizens is appalling to me. Anyone who loves our country enough to volunteer to fight, even die for us ought to be afforded the simple right to say goodbye to the person he or she loves before heading off to war.

Let’s honor all of our patriotic Americans in uniform and their family members by repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

- Sharon Alexander