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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
December 18, 1992
ROTC students forced to sign ‘inquisitorial' affadavit
by Lou Chibbaro, Jr.
The Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) is ordering its student enlistees to sign an affadavit acknowledging they will be expelled from the ROTC program and forced to return their scholarship money if they are found to be gay.
News of the ROTC affadavit, which surfaced in late November, has angered gay campus groups and added a new level to the growing controversy over Presidentelect Bill Clinton's plan to lift the ban against gays in the military.
Lt. Donald Thomas, a spokesperson for
the Navy, said naval officials approved the new affadavit in the summer and began issuing it to college students enrolled in the Naval ROTC in September, when the students returned to school for the fall semester.
The issue became the subject of news media reports when U.S. Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo., called the affadavit "inquisitorial." Schroeder, saying she was informed of the affadavit by an ROTC enlistee at Cornell University, asked Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to suspend the requirement that ROTC members sign the oath.
Clinton letter opens NGLTF Creating Change conference
The fifth annual NGLTF Creating Change conference, held in Los Angeles on the weekend of November 13, opened on an unprecedented note. Outgoing NGLTF director Urvashi Vaid surprised the 1,200 gay and lesbian activists attending when she read a letter to the opening plenary:
"To my friends at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: I would like to welcome you all to the NGLTF Policy Institute Conference. Hillary and I--" Vaid was interrupted by prolonged cheers, "Hillary and I would like to thank you all for the hard work you have done for the advancement of human rights far gay and lesbian people everywhere. It is an inspiration to us all.
"I would also like to take this opportunity to thank every one of you for your tremendous support during our campaign
for change. Without your support, our victory on November 3rd would not have been possible. I now ask you again for your help and support in implementing the changes that are needed to get America moving forward once more. Thank you.
"Sincerely, Bill Clinton."
Clinton's election victory provided a backdrop for the entire weekend of 130 workshops, three plenary sessions, and other events, with topics ranging from the military, the Colorado antigay amenedent, aristic freedom, and events in the international gay and lesbian community.
The conference, the largest one to date, was also Urvashi Vaid's farewell as director of the NGLTF. Torie Osborn, recently director of the Los Angeles gay and lesbian center, formally took over the directorship of NGLTF at the conference.
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"I consider this affadavit a totally unwarranted intrusion in the private lives of American citizens," Schroeder told Cheney, in a November 17 letter.
Thomas said the Army and Air Force had already been using a similar affadavit in their ROTC programs. He said the Navy decided to require its ROTC members to sign the oath in order to clarify its position on homosexuality and to bring the Naval ROTC in line with ROTC's in other branches of the service.
Pentagon officials have said ROTC programs have always disqualified gays from their ranks. But officials with the American Civil Liberties Union said efforts by ROTC leaders to recoup scholarship money from members expelled for being gay did not
begin
until 1990.
Gay activists familiar with military issues have said they are unaware of anyone
actually being forced to repay ROTC schol-
arship funds due to a discharge for being gay. However, William Rubenstein, director of the ACLU's national "Lesbian and Gay Rights Project," said the affadavits may be a sign that military officials plan to more aggressively seek repayment.
In 1990, the Army ROTC expelled James Holobaugh of Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., for being gay, and later sent him a bill seeking payment of his $25,000 scholarship. Holobaugh threatened to sue the ROTC, claiming the Army could not demand such a payment because he was discharged against his will and that he had fulfilled his part of their agreement to serve in the military. The Army has since discontinued its attempt to collect its money from Holobaugh.
News of the ROTC affadavits came at a time when critics in the military and Congress continued to demand that Clinton scrap his plan to repeal a Defense Dept. ban on gays in the armed services. Among the critics to surface is retired Col. David Hackworth, the Vietnam war hero and contributing editor to Newsweek, who told ABC's Nightline that lifting the ban on gays will destroy troop morale.
Members of gay veterans groups have disputed such predictions, saying critics such as Hackworth are basing their claims on their own homophobia.
Reprinted with permission from the Washington Blade.
Gay rights in Dade County? Miami Beach may pass bill
by Kristina Campbell
In November, Miami Beach moved a step closer to becoming the first in Dade County to adopt a human rights ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gays since the county's original law protecting gays was repealed by referendum in a 1977 effort led by Anita Bryant.
City commissioners on Nov. 18 approved the first reading of a proposed ordinance which outlaws discrimination without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, handicap, marital status, familial status, and age.
Richard Brown, city clerk, said before the vote that the commission on Oct. 28 passed a resolution declaring that everyone in the city should be free of discrimination, including bias based on sexual orientation. The commission stopped short of putting such language into law at that meeting, Brown said, because the city attorney's office had not prepared a bill for the commission to vote on.
But the commission ordered the attorney's office to do just that as quickly as possible, and now the proposed ordinance covers employment, housing, and public accommodations. Its exceptions include one for religiously owned or sponsored groups which discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, Brown said. He added
that some church groups did not approve of the proposed ordinance.
"Some of the religious community wanted an exemption for 'moral grounds,' whatever that meant," Brown said. "It was like the Mack Truck loophole--you could drive anything through it. But that is not in here."
The bill needs five votes to pass. The first reading passed 6-0, as did the commission's resolution against discrimination. One member of the seven-person commission was absent from both of those meetings.
Brown said the bill likely will pass and be enacted 90 days after the December 2 reading, according to the current language of the proposed ordinance.
The legislation, as it's written, requires a $250 fine for a first violation and a $500 fine for subsequent fines in a five-year period, Brown said. But he added the commission may revise the measure to carry stiffer fines
[On December 10 the Chronicle contacted the Miami Beach City Clerk's Office to discover that the measure had passed, but with "changes." The clerk said she did not yet have the text of the revised ordinance, but would mail a complete copy to the paper when she did.]
Reprinted with permission from the Washington Blade.
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