Happy Pride! Joe Biden Pardons LGBTQ+ Military People Kicked Out Under Old Bigoted Ban
Rogue tyrant bent on doing right thing.
President Joe Biden marked Pride Month today by issuing pardons for thousands of service members forced out of the military because of their identity back in the bad old days when military service was banned for LGBTQ+ folks.
In a statement, Biden said that he was
righting an historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves. Our Nation’s service members stand on the frontlines of freedom, and risk their lives in order to defend our country.
As the AP explains, the pardons will specifically go to
service members who were convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s former Article 125, which criminalized sodomy. The law, which has been on the books since 1951, was rewritten in 2013 to prohibit only forcible acts.
The upshot is that those who’ve been pardoned will be able to file for their military discharges to be upgraded, so they can get back pay and benefits. To receive the pardon, former service members will need to apply to whichever branch of the service held their court-martial, to make sure it complies with the terms of the pardon — for instance, someone also convicted of “fraternization” — a crime for service members regardless of orientation — would still be SOL as far as getting their discharge upgraded to “honorable.”
The White House didn’t have a specific number, but estimated that “thousands” of service members will be covered, most of whom were convicted before Congress ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2011, when Biden was Barack Obama’s veep. That policy barred LGBTQ+ people from serving, but the criminalization of sodomy in the military justice code remained until the 2013 passage of the Defense bill for fiscal 2014, in case you were wondering what the difference was (like I was!).
Fox News, always happy to help, points out that Biden voted for DADT back in 1993, so we guess he’s a terrible hypocrite for coming to have more enlightened views then DADT, which in 1993 was the more enlightened view. We would offer more rightwing reactions, but fuck ‘em, this is a nice times post.
The proclamation also states that while this pardon is only for Article 125 convictions, the administration will take additional steps to make things right for “other LGBTQI+ individuals who served our Nation and were convicted of other crimes because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.” The AP notes that other parts of the military justice code were “used as pretext to punish or force out LGBTQ troops,” and that former service members unjustly treated that way will be able to apply for clemency through the Department of Justice.
The AP notes that the pardon announcement comes just ahead of Biden’s planned “high-profile fundraiser with LGBTQ donors in New York on Friday,” and damn right this should be a big applause line.
Seems like this might be a good time to remember Technical Sergeant Leonard Phillip Matlovich, who was forced out of the Air Force in 1975 for being gay, after an exemplary service record including service in Vietnam. Matlovich became the first LGBTQ+ service member to deliberately out himself in protest of the ban, and was discharged for it, albeit honorably, with no court-martial. Matlovich sued to try to reverse the discharge, but eventually accepted a financial settlement for his back pay, future pay, and pension, so there was some justice there.
Matlovich became a prominent activist during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and participated in a 1987 protest outside the White House to call attention to Ronald Reagan’s shameful silence on the epidemic. He died in 1988, and is buried in Washington DC’s Congressional Cemetery with a famous tombstone that doesn’t bear his name, but says: “A GAY VIETNAM VETERAN: When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”
Joe Biden today took a real step toward justice for Matlovich and the estimated 100,000 service members forced out of the US military since World War II.
[White House / White House / AP / ABC News]
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Area Moral Arc Of Universe Nudged A Bit More Toward Justice
While I haven’t seen the stats, I’ve read that the ban affected far more women than men. Apparently plenty of the women weren’t even lesbians - instead they had rejected advances or reported harassment from male comrades or superiors, who made the accusations out of revenge.