Marchers Mourn Slain Gay Sailor, Call for End to Ban

With pink carnations and black armbands, several hundred people protested the military’s ban on gays and lesbians Sunday, marching to the Long Beach Naval Station in memory of a murdered gay sailor from Illinois.

Led by the color guard of a homosexual veterans group, they walked more than two miles across the Vincent Thomas Bridge from San Pedro to the naval station gate, dropping flowers into the harbor channel as they crossed the bridge, all in the name of Seaman Allen Schindler.

At a news conference preceding the march and a rally afterward, Dorothy Hajdys, Schindler’s mother, spoke tearfully of her 22-year-son, who was beaten to death in Japan last fall, allegedly by shipmates, not long after he had informed his commanding officer that he was gay.

“Thank you for being here and for remembering my son,” she told the crowd outside the station gate, in front of a stage decorated with a gay pride banner. The march was Southern California’s premier event of Operation Lift the Ban Weekend.

“I believe my son is in heaven now and looking down and saying: ‘Go for it, mom. Don’t let another son be killed like I was.’ I just pray that his death won’t be in vain.”

Schindler’s murder has become a rallying cry for activists who contend that he was killed because he was gay, and who blame the military for fostering hatred of homosexuals.

“Allen Schindler’s death was not an isolated incident,” insisted Carol Anderson, one of the march organizers and a speaker at the rally. “Allen Schindler died because of the homophobic policies of the United States government.”

Hajdys, noting that she is hardly a gay activist, said she thought her son, a radioman, would be alive were it not for the ban on gay service members. “He could do his job as well as anyone else on the ship. What difference did it make, as long as he didn’t push his sexuality on someone else?” she asked.

Other speakers condemned Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a supporter of the homosexual ban, and disparaged the hearings his committee will conduct this week as a “rigged” exercise with a “preordained” outcome.

President Clinton’s statement last week that he might consider the possibility of segregating gay troops also was bitterly denounced.

“I am not going to sing the gay version of Al Jolson’s ‘Mammy,’ for anybody,” said Miriam Ben-Shalom, president of the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Veterans of America.

Referring to the oft-repeated argument that openly homosexual servicemen and women could never be tolerated in the close quarters of military life, she quipped that it is time to challenge the notion that “we are all hormonal beasts who lose our self-control at the drop of a bar of soap.”

The march was one of a series of events organized by gay activists in more than 20 cities in California and around the nation over the past few days, all aimed at ending the ban on gays and lesbians in the military.

In Irvine and West Hollywood, there were town hall meetings. In San Diego, “bar night” events raised money, and in San Francisco, people passed the hat for the campaign. From Palm Springs to Santa Monica, volunteers collected petition signatures and exhorted people to write their members of Congress, and sold military-style dog tags reading “Operation Lift the Ban.”

The weekend events were orchestrated by the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the largest gay and lesbian political organization in the nation and one of a number of groups working to stir support for Clinton’s plan to drop the military’s 50-year ban on homosexuals.

“What we need to do is change public opinion and get the polls turned around,” said the campaign fund’s executive director, Tim McFeeley, who flew in from Washington and spoke at the West Hollywood town meeting.

Turning around sentiment will be no easy task. Public support--key to winning congressional backing for Clinton’s plan--slipped this year as the military leadership, key senators and religious conservatives criticized the proposal that would let gays and lesbians openly serve in the armed forces.

The Campaign for Military Service, a coalition of gay and civil rights groups that came together to lobby against the ban, is conducting polling and focus groups in states such as Ohio and Louisiana, where it is interviewing undecided citizens to find out what arguments are most effective at changing the public’s mind.

The coalition wants to raise several million dollars to wage a media campaign to boost support for its cause; so far, only about $200,000 has been collected.

A bus tour of gay veterans started in Minneapolis and is rolling toward Washington for an April 25 gay rights rally that organizers hope will draw as many as 1 million people.

Riding one of the buses used last year by the Clinton-Gore campaign, the veterans--including Ben-Shalom--are winding their way through states such as Florida and North Carolina, whose senators either oppose ending the ban or are undecided.

Town by town, they stage press conferences, rallies and public forums.

“We’re putting a human face to the issue,” said David M. Smith, spokesman for the campaign coalition, on loan from the Los Angeles office of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Although the crowds have been sparse, Smith said local press coverage has chronicled the tour’s stops in such cities as Fargo, N.D., and Jackson, Miss.

The Human Rights Campaign Fund and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force are beginning mass mailings, urging supporters to contribute and to wage a phone and letter campaign to counter the deluge of calls and mail churned out by the opposition this year.

In Los Angeles, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is seeking the help of Hollywood celebrities.

At the same time, mainstream civil rights groups such as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People have come out against the ban, although the NAACP endorsement has not yet translated into tangible lobbying effort.

“I don’t think it’s something (black civil rights groups) want to jump on,” said Bill Meredith, a member of the board of governors of the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, a Southern California group. The group is meeting with the Black Congressional Caucus before the April 25 march.

Activists say they have gained some votes in the Senate since Clinton took office, but add that if the vote was taken today, the plan to drop the military ban would be defeated.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Torie Osborn, executive director of the national task force. “I think the lobbying effort has just begun.”