Norton Urges Immediate Steps to Allow Full Freedom for Openly Gay Americans to Serve In Armed Forces

Norton Urges Immediate Steps to Allow Full Freedom for Openly Gay Americans to Serve In Armed Forces

October 21, 2010

WASHINGTON, DC -- Following the federal appeals court decision granting the Justice Department a temporary emergency stay on the court's ruling overturning "don't ask, don't tell," Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said, "We are close to forever ending one of the last shameful vestiges of overt and deliberate discrimination in American society, as openly gay men and women claim their full and equal rights to serve in our military." Norton, who votes on the House floor in the Committee of the Whole, voted in favor of the amendment to the Defense authorization bill to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." As a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and as a longtime civil rights activist, Norton said she had been particularly pleased when the administration continued to enforce the federal district court decision that threw out "don't ask, don't tell," despite the administration's appeal. The Justice Department is obligated to defend all acts of Congress, even when the administration disagrees. "The American people have long been ahead of the Congress and even the courts, with the majority supporting the rights of gay men and women to serve in the armed forces without any discrimination," Norton said. "The Pentagon study is no reason to delay the steps necessary to implement a matter of civil rights. The military already has significant experience in incorporating Americans it once shunned. The armed forces demonstrated its agility was not limited to wars when President Harry Truman ordered racial integration of the armed forces even though our domestic institutions were still segregated, and when the military itself proceeded to integrate women into almost all positions."