Bravo to the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for petitioning the military's highest court to strike down a law from the Uniform Code of Military Justice that makes private, consensual sodomy a crime -- and one subject to stricter penalties than many violent assaults.
Congress could, of course, revise the military sodomy
prohibition, known as Article 125, but has refused to do so.
According to
Lambda Legal's website:
In 2001, a blue ribbon panel chaired by Judge Walter T. Cox III was tasked to review the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) on its fiftieth anniversary. Calling military sodomy prosecutions "arbitrary, even vindictive," the Cox Commission recommended that Congress repeal Article 125 and replace it with a statute governing sexual abuse similar to laws adopted by many states and in Title 18 of the United States Code. Congress has not acted on the Commission's recommendations and the law remains in effect.
Overturning Article 125 won't end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" (or "lie and hide") policy and the risk of discharge if the military learns you're gay. But it would lessen the real danger of prosecution that closeted gays in the military still face while serving their country.
Dualing Marriage Weeks Planned.
The anti-gay Family Research Council and its cohorts (the
Traditional Values Coalition, Concerned Women for America, etc.)
are planning to make opposition to gay marriage "the issue of
2004," according to the FRC's
website.
The groups have declared October 12-18 to be "Marriage
Protection Week," dedicated to mobilizing their grassroots to
lobby Congress.
In response, the Metropolitan Community Church is trying to organize a "Marriage Equality Week" campaign during the same week. But in terms of coordination and mobilization, the anti-gays seem to be way ahead of the game.
It's now crystal clear that opposition to gay marriage will be the animating issues for the religious right during the decade ahead, replacing even opposition to abortion.
The Locker Room Closet.
If you haven't read Boston Hearld sports writer Ed Gray's
coming out column, you should. The locker rooms of professional
sports will likely be one of the last bastions of homophobia to
fall.