GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

'Don't ask'

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to pick up more co-sponsors after the hearings.

"I think we have a chance to win" this time, Meehan said.

He is cautious, however, to set what he calls "realistic goals and objectives" for its passage, which include getting a companion bill filed in the Senate as well as finding more co-sponsors and setting the hearings.

Passage is not assured, even in the House where Democrats control the balance of votes 233 to 202.

The Capitol Hill insider online magazine Politico.com reports that there is a reluctance to address an issue that "overwhelmed the early days of Bill Clinton's presidency and has been perceived as a Democratic liability ever since."

Meehan agrees, as does Human Rights Campaign vice president David Smith, who

March 2, 2007

told the magazine, "The prospects [for passage] are unclear."

Before the 1993 compromise known as "don't ask, don't tell," there was a total ban on gays and lesbians in the military, and "witchhunts" to ferret them out were common. Newly-elected President Clinton had made a campaign promise to lift the ban and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly. Congress and the military, led by Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, wanted to keep it and threatened to stop other legislative priorities of the new administration. Eventually, the military agreed to the new policy which allows gays and lesbians to serve, but only if they remain in the closet. Congress then went against a deal with the administration and enacted the policy into law.

By most accounts it has been a disaster, causing over 11,000 gay and lesbian dismissals between 1993 and 2006, including the widely publicized Arabic linguists dismissed after the September 11 attacks.

Currently there is an average of two dismissals for homosexuality a day. With the

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personnel needs of the military rising, highprofile retired military officers have changed their minds and want the law to go.

The most recent to come forward is retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the law was passed.

Meehan said another factor in favor of his bill is that 60 percent of the countries whose troops serve with U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have lesbians and gays serving openly. There are none of the readiness and morale problems predicted in Nunn's 1993 Senate hearings, which featured media tours of showers aboard a submarine.

Shalikashvili "opens the door for dialogue," Meehan said, adding that he doesn't expect current officers to come forward.

"People entering the military today believe that gay people should serve openly,"

Murder

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"Andrew Anthos was a wonderful fellow who was loved by his family and thousands of people he encountered in Detroit and Lansing over his many years as a true man about town," said Jeffrey Montgomery, Triangle's executive director. "In the end, the fact that he was a wonderful man didn't account for much. The fact that he was gay did."

Montgomery placed the blame for the attack not only on the assailant himself, but also on anti-gay activists "who have seeded the air with hatred and animosity toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."

"There are those who have made their careers in the anti-gay industry. Basketball stars speak openly about their hate for gays. Reckless judges rule that we don't deserve health benefits. So-called family values types denounce us," he fumed. "Well, Andrew Anthos had a family and he had great value. The bigots have made the lives of LGBT people cheap, throwaway commodities. They have dehumanized us, they have called for open season on us."

"They have put us all at risk,” he concluded, noting an attack on a gay man outside of a popular bar in Detroit last year. "These extremist political, religious and social leaders must be called out for what they are hatemongers. They are a menace to decent, civil society."

State Senator Hansen Clarke pointed to the murder as a call to pass hate crime legislation that includes sexual orientation

Meehan said. "The dynamic is changing."

Meehan also pointed to a December 2006 Zogby poll showing that three quarters of active troops are comfortable serving with openly gay colleagues.

"The resistance is from the people who have been around a long time," Meehan said. The law is also threatened by litigation and by the possibility of a military draft.

Sociologist Charles Moskos, the architect of "don't ask, don't tell," said in 2003 that the law is incompatible with a draft. Unwilling draftees would simply tell officials they are gay, whether they are or not.

Meehan, however, may not be in Congress long enough to see the bill pass. He is one of three finalists being considered for chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

and gender identity.

"We need to call this exactly what it is, a hate crime, and punish the perpetrator as such," the senator said.

"It's a shame that Andrew Anthos will never see the capitol illuminated like he had always dreamed," Clarke said, "but his family is still carrying on his crusade, and I'm going to do everything I can in Lansing to see the capitol lit in honor of our veterans, and in honor of the man who worked so hard to see it done."

Police in Detroit are investigating the murder as a hate crime, although Michigan's laws don't include sexual orientation in the definitions.

Anthos' cousin, Athena Fedenis, was pleased with the efforts of police and the Triangle Foundation. She also expressed frustration that the "sick, homophobic coward" who took her cousin's life was still at large.

Most of all, though, she was sad at the loss of her cousin, who members of the family called "Buddy."

"Some people may say that Buddy was different. Aren't we all?" she asked. "Was Buddy different because he loved life? Was he different because he respected everyone he met? Was he different because he believed in the city of Detroit when no one else did? Was he different because he thought it was important to light the dome of our state capitol the Fourth of July in red, white and blue to honor our veterans and law enforcement officers?"

"Yes, he was different, because he cared enough to do something about the things he believed in," Fedenis said.

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Oscars

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There were LGBT-related losers that night. Most notably, Notes on a Scandal, which deals with a Fatal Attraction-like lesbian affair, lost in all four categories in which it was nominated-Best Adapted Screenplay (Patrick Marber), Best Score (Philip Glass), Best Actress (Judie Dench) and Best Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett). Notes was an overrated film and there were many other more deserving nomi-

nees.

Martin Scorsese and his The Departed were the big winners of the evening with

Official

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walling" their investigations, which is fueling a campaign by conservative pundits to blame the LGBT groups.

"Bloch appears to be attempting to make himself into a right-wing martyr so that he will be canonized if he is canned," said Jeff Ruch, who directs Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, one of the groups leading the charge against Bloch. In a late 2006 column in the neoconservative Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes wrote that Bloch was being "persecuted" for "his removal of 'sexual orientation' from the list of conditions covered by anti-discrimination laws."

"The struggle over Bloch's stand is largely symbolic," wrote Barnes. "OSC has

Best Director and Best Film. It also won for Best Adapted Screenplay for William Monahan and Best Editing for Thelma Schoomaker.

Ironically, because the Oscar has eluded Scorsese for so many years and so many great films, it was he and not Al Gore who joked about a recount. "Could you doublecheck the envelope?" he remarked to great laughter.

The biggest irony of the evening may have been that Al Gore was not listed as a producer of An Inconvenient Truth, even though he was the driving force behind the film. Technically, he does not have an Oscar. It seems like he is always winning things with nothing to show for it.

received few complaints of bias against gays. But it led to a detailed complaint to Congress and a withering barrage of investigations."

"Bloch, a lawyer from Kansas, is a Christian," Barnes continued. "He and his wife Catherine have seven children."

Anti-gay activist Phyllis Schlafly also came to Bloch's defense in a November article in Bend Weekly, writing, "The gay lobby retaliated, instigating five investigations against Bloch. After all five cleared him of any wrongdoing, the response by the gay lobby was to initiate a sixth investigation." Schlafly, ironically, has a gay son. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat chairing the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform introduced a bill February 13 that would provide new procedures for federal whistleblowers, including access to federal court in an attempt to keep complaints away from Bloch's OSC.