Separate Is Not Equal

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DADT, DOMA, LGBT Servicemembers, Mary Griggs

by Mary Griggs

I’m an Army brat and I well know the myriad of benefits that came with being a dependent. There was  housing on post that really helped when living in places with high real estate prices or in foreign lands, a travel allowance that included all our stuff when traveling to and from duty stations, medical care for my numerous soccer injuries and runny noses, the commissary for groceries to feed us all and being surrounded by spouses and kids that understood the stresses, strains, and joys of military life.

I remember being in high school when the first male spouse petitioned for access to the Officer’s Wives Club where we were stationed. I remember some of the discussions that surrounded it as my mom was an officer of the organization at the time. The Fort McPherson group did the right thing, though. They recognized that supporting each other was more important than some ‘tradition’ and that changing the name was only the right thing to do in the face of changing times.

Fast forward a few years and after the policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been repealed but, because the Defense of Marriage Act remains, the usual support to military dependents is entirely lacking for same-sex spouses and, potentially, for their children. The NY Times outlined a lot of the issues facing these servicemembers and their families in their article: Military Rules Leave Gay Spouses Out in Cold.

Now there is the Ft. Bragg Offices Spouses Club refusing to admit the legally married spouse of a Lieutenant Colonel stationed at the base. They offered to allow her to be a guest (not a member) but it should be unacceptable for an organization that is designed to support officer spouses to make such a blatantly discriminatory decision.

The Marine Corps has managed to see the truth and recognizes that family readiness impacts unit readiness. They have informed the spouses clubs operating on its installations that they must admit same-sex spouses if the clubs wish to operate on Marine property.

You would think this would be a no brainer – the only prerequisite for membership to these clubs is to be the spouse of an officer. There are not application forms that ask for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. And can you imagine the reaction if someone wasn’t admitted because of their race or religion?

It is shameful not to allow the spouse of an active duty service member the right to join a support group to help deal with the life and stress of a military spouse.

And if that wasn’t a good enough example of why DOMA must go, how about the story of Staff Sgt. Tracy Dice?

She was made a war widow after her wife was killed in Afghanistan. Donna Rae Johnson and two other members of her unit – the 514th Military Police Company based in Winterville – died Oct. 1 when a suicide bomber attacked while they were on patrol.

Unlike the way a heterosexual military spouse is treated, the military only informed Donna Rae’s parents of her death, would only allow them to claim the body (until her mother-in-law insisted on Tracy’s presence) and, during the funeral, the flag that had draped the coffin was handed to Dice’s mother-in-law instead of to the grieving widow.

How is this right?

“It’s a tragedy that a soldier could fall and a spouse not be supported,” Tracy Dice said. “It’s 100 percent wrong.”

Completely agree.

If we wish to honor the service our military personnel, we also need to respect the sacrifices of their families and provide to them the support all other military families receive as due course.

It is time for DOMA to be repealed. Further, it is time for the Pentagon to make policy changes to recognize and support the families of all their servicemembers. As the Report of the Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with a Repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy stated that some benefits, “…the Department of Defense could legally direct the Services to revise their regulations to extend coverage to Service members’ same-sex partners.” (page 144) These include benefits and support services like access to military family housing, base commissaries and exchanges, relocation and sponsorship for overseas duty stations, and medical care for dependents.

It is time to do the right thing.

Well Regulated

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2nd Amendment, Mary Griggs, Rant, Violence

by Mary Griggs

It seems to me that when folks quote the Second Amendment, they often forget the first part of it.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

With President Obama signing 23 Executive Orders on gun safety the other day, you would have thought that the storm troopers were at the door instead of him doing his Presidential responsibility to uphold our Constitutional interest in the security of a free state by regulating against gun violence.

While a number of Chiefs of Police and Mayors (notably Ronal Serpas and Mitch Landrieu from New Orleans) came out supporting the orders as a good first step to address gun violence, a number of Republican legislators proposed bills that would make enforcing any gun control efforts illegal in their state (Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee to name a few).

Even worse than the legislators (most of whom were bought by the gun lobby) who are seeking to nullify any efforts to curb gun violence was the tone-deaf response of the NRA:

Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation. Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.

The NRA stands opposed to anything resembling sensible gun control. As Douglas Anthony Cooper said in his 7 part series on Huffington Post on NRA vs USA: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The NRA would deprive you of the first and third, by redefining the second.”

The National Rifle Association no longer represents gun owners like me. Today, less than half of the NRA’s revenues come from program fees and membership dues.

The bulk of the group’s money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.

From the Business Insider article: since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. The NRA also made $20.9 million — about 10 percent of its revenue — from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990.

Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns. Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions.

The NRA’s revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun industry so, of course, they oppose anything that would impact their income. They are a gun lobby and their presence in the debate has been a great way for the gun manufacturers to stay out of the limelight during the post-massacre news cycles.

Given that NRA doesn’t have the best interests of their members or even the rest of the population in mind, there are still a number of Americans that see any infringement on guns leading inevitably to only criminals having guns.

In my opinion, guns are tools. I believe that they can be a good equalizer when used for home defense but also that any tool is only as good as the tool and the user.

Look at it this way, we don’t just hand out the keys to a car to just anyone. You have to be at least sixteen years old and pass a test and drivers have to carry insurance, register their vehicles and obey the law. Manufacturers of cars need to make sure there are adequate safety measures, like seat belts and anti-lock brakes. None of this puts an undue burden on law-abiding individuals.

But what about the lawbreakers? Just because there are plenty of speeders on the road, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have speed limits. Just because some people drink and drive, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be able to prosecute those who put others at risk by their behavior.

Should we require anything less for guns?

Improving the background checks to not only close the gun show loophole but to include federal agencies into in the database (see John Stewart’s excellent piece on the NRA, GOP and ATF), will help keep gun ownership the purview of law-abiding citizens.

Those steps alone won’t mean an end to gun violence. Here in Louisiana, where an estimated 46 percent of households own a firearm, we have a gun death rate of 19.87 per 100,000. In 2007, Louisiana reported 823 gun deaths by both homicide and suicide, according to the CDC.

The national average of gun deaths is about 10 per 100,000, roughly half the rate of Louisiana. The lowest per-capita gun death rates were in Hawaii, with 3 per 100,000, and a household gun ownership rate of about 10 percent.

To me it seems pretty simple – more guns lead to more gun deaths but I don’t know that for sure (correlation doesn’t always imply causation). By the same token, those who point at violent video games and on screen carnage in films and tv shows as the culprit for an environment that leads to violence ignore the experience of Japan, where the death rate is .07 per 100,000 and they’ve got the same video games and tv shows.

Something else is at work. Research might provide us with some answers. It is important for us to figure out why the United States has so many of our citizens dying at the hands of their fellow citizens. I was glad to see President Obama empowering CDC and others to actually study and find out the reasons why massacres occur and how we can stem the tide of deaths.

Those orders aren’t the only solution. We must also reduce criminal access to military style weapons, armor piercing bullets and high capacity magazines. However, that will have to be taken up by the Congress, which has shown little will to do anything on this issue.

Some of it is money. The NRA bankrolls many politicians on both sides of the aisle.

I was glad to see that Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, are starting a foundation to counter some of that blood money. Their foundation, Americans for Responsible Solutions, needs our support to balance the influence of the gun lobby.

If the NRA doesn’t speak for you, help support those who do.

Valentine’s Day Signing

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Mary Griggs, Publishing

Is there anything better than an event on Valentine’s Day with readings from the Queen of Romance, Karin Kallmaker, and little ole me? How about adding a local wine maker and local chocolatier?

As Karin Kallmaker says, “Skip the tense dinner in an overcrowded restaurant. Wine, chocolate, and romance on Valentine’s Day in a bookstore with other women! Awesome, right?”

The event will be at Laurel Book Store on Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 6:30pm. They are located at 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94619. Check ’em out on Facebook and view the Facebook Event Invite!

There will be Barlovento Chocolate and Roland Rosario wines there to share the V-Day love with us at Laurel Bookstore. Festivities start around 6:30 and will include readings by Karin Kallmaker and Mary Griggs. Meeting, greeting, flirting & schmoozing and maybe some true life or mostly true life tales told. Singles, couples and undecideds are welcome.

Wine, Chocolate & Romance, what’s not to love?

New Contract

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Mary Griggs, Publishing

I have signed the contract and sent off the digital copy of my next manuscript to my publisher, Bella Books.

In the Midst of Tribulation is a novel about a group of women surviving and creating a community in a post-apocolyptic world.

As one of my early readers said, “Dark but hopeful.”

I don’t have publication dates or anything else like that but I wanted to let folks know what to expect next from me.

Foggy Morning in New Orleans

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Mary Griggs, Photography

There was a dense fog advisory in the city until 9am today, so I woke up before the sun came up to capture the sights of the city.

 

 

Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orleans
St. Louis Cemetery #2

 

Two streetcars pass on St. Charles Avenue

 

Justice Delayed, No Longer Denied

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DOMA, LGBT Equality, Marriage Equality, Mary Griggs

by Mary Griggs

One little known aspect of the policy against “homosexuality” for the US military was that service members who were discharged for being gay or lesbian, had their separation pay cut in half. The policy, which was not part of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” statute was, therefore, not changed with the law was repealed.

Laura Schauer Ives, managing attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico, rightly called this a “double dose of discrimination.” The ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of New Mexico had filed a class action lawsuit against the policy.

Under the settlement all service members covered by the lawsuit will be contacted by the government and notified that they are eligible to opt in to the settlement and receive 100 percent of the separation pay that they would have received had they been discharged for any other honorable reason. Federal law entitles service members to separation pay if they have been involuntarily and honorably discharged from the military after completing at least six years of service in order to help ease their transition to civilian life.

Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a step in the right direction and this ruling is another step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the continuation of the Defense of Marriage Act means that LGBT service members continue to face discrimination.

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) singles out lawfully married same-sex couples for discriminatory treatment under federal law, thereby denying them more than 1100 federal protections and responsibilities that would otherwise apply to them once legally married. Not only does DOMA allow states to refuse to recognize valid civil marriages of same-sex couples, it removes all same-sex couples, even those who have taken on the serious legal responsibilities of civil marriage and are recognized as married under state law, out of all federal statutes, regulations, and rulings applicable to all other married people.

Because of DOMA, the US military is barred from doing what is best for unit cohesion and morale, which is to treat all personnel and their families fairly and equally. The partners and families of LGBT personnel are restricted from accessing the vast resources offered to most military families, like on base commissary, dependent medical care and the support of other’s similarly situated. Worse, they are denied access to crucial information about deployed family members, including their status, condition, return dates or even whether they have been killed. Finally, they are denied their spousal right to veteran’s benefits and social security.

The basic mission of the military is to provide the forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of the United States. They are volunteers, who join in the knowledge that they may be asked to lay down their lives so that the rest of us may live in peace. Some see the military as a calling and too many have returned to their homeland after having left body parts in foreign lands. A lamentable number never return at all.

Those who put on the uniform are heroes. They should not be treated like second-class citizens because of their sexual orientation. If we are serious about honoring them and the values they defend, the time to repeal DOMA is now.

2013 Resolutions

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Mary Griggs

Every January, people make a whole slew of resolutions, only to forget about them a few weeks later. This year, though, I’m going to make my resolutions matter for women and LGBT persons.

Instead of buying another gym membership to exercise my muscles, I’m going to work on exercising my rights.

One way I will do that is to continue to support, both financially and with my time, Forum For Equality. I currently serve on the Board for the Forum For Equality Louisiana and I am convinced that this organization is one of the best hopes Louisianans have for passing local and statewide LGBT legislation to protect us and our families.

The Forum For Equality is planning for a very busy 2013 Legislative session and that means laying the ground work now with building coalitions, educating lawmakers and cultivating the media. We need for everyone who cares about equality and fairness to become members and to support our efforts.

I’m asking you to go join or renew your membership now. I will be renewing at this time as a sustaining member and increasing the monthly contributions that I paid last year. If at all possible, consider renewing at a higher rate or even making a tax deductible donation to the Forum For Equality Foundation.

You can follow this link to the secure membership form or click from the Forum’s website: http://forumforequality.org/wordpress/membership/become-a-member-2/

Even if you can’t make the financial commitment, we need people to help us pass legislation by lobbying their legislators, testifying at committee hearings and being part of of an effort to increase the political visibility of our community. Contact the Forum’s Managing Director, Sarah Jane Brady, for more information. The office phone number is 504-569-9156.

I will also be continuing to work with the Independent Women’s Organization. This organization is dedicated to promoting the issues and candidates of the Democratic Party. Consider becoming a member and you can use this form: IWO Membership Application.

As Gandhi once said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” I hope you will join me this year in resolving to be that change.

All the best to you and yours in 2013!