National
Gay advocates assail Obama’s Justice Department
Claim administration misrepresented views in ‘Don’t Ask’ brief
Experts on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are lambasting the Justice Department, claiming the administration misrepresented their views in a legal brief aimed at thwarting a court challenge to the ban on open service.
Nathaniel Frank, a senior fellow at the Palm Center, a think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said the Obama administration mischaracterized his views on the impact that open service would have on privacy issues.
“The way they portrayed me is preposterous and I’m not sure that any person in good faith hearing what I had to say could conclude what the [Department of Justice] concluded in their [request for] summary judgment,” he said. “I specifically said having a concern about privacy is not irrational, but using that privacy concern as an argument for the need to ban gays is irrational.”
Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, similarly claimed the Justice Department misrepresented what he said in depositions about privacy arguments, and even went so far as to say the Obama administration lawyers weren’t being truthful.
“They completely misrepresented my statement in the deposition,” Belkin said. “They were not being truthful about my statement because they said that I claimed that there is a rational basis for the privacy arguments, and I claimed no such thing.”
In a request for summary judgment released earlier this week, the Justice Department names Frank and Belkin as among the experts on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” who gave depositions in the case of Log Cabin v. United States. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the ban on the basis that it infringes upon the First Amendment rights of LGBT service members.
Both Frank and Belkin were questioned during deposition about whether privacy concerns for service members constituted a rational basis for the enactment of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993.
The brief says Frank “acknowledged” during his deposition that “privacy concerns such as those on which Congress relied were not irrational.” But Frank disputed this characterization, pointing to his remarks during deposition.
According to an excerpt of the deposition obtained by DC Agenda, Frank was asked about privacy issues in the context of whether former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell’s statement in 1993 that service members “are required to live in communal settings that force intimacy and provide little privacy” was based on professional military judgment.
Frank replied that Powell — whose position has since evolved to endorse the Pentagon’s process for repealing the law — may have had concerns with privacy as a general matter based on professional judgment, but said Powell’s statement doesn’t “constitute an argument for keeping out open homosexuals.”
“Because what he says here is that service members are required to serve with very little privacy, so it doesn’t make any sense to me to conclude from that that there is a justification to exclude open homosexuals since he’s just acknowledged that part of being in the military means sacrificing privacy,” Frank said in his deposition.
It’s for this reason that Frank is now saying the Justice Department misrepresented his views in the brief against the lawsuit.
“So I really said the opposite of what the DOJ motion claims,” he said. “I made very clear that I would not call those feelings [about privacy] irrational, but nor would I call it rational to use that feeling as a legitimate basis for excluding a whole group of people. And that’s all there in the record.”
Belkin similarly cried foul, claiming the Justice Department mischaracterized his deposition in the brief. The administration says that Belkin testified that “the privacy basis is rational in circumstances such as combat where private accommodations are not possible.”
“Dr. Belkin studied the experience of the Israeli military and found that heterosexual concern about privacy necessitated, in certain instances, separate accommodations or work arrangements for heterosexual service members,” says the brief. “Dr. Belkin also acknowledged similar findings with respect to Congress’ concern regarding sexual tension within the military.”
According to the brief, Belkin also “pointedly admitted” people in the military have sex with each other, and some service members have “sex with other members of the same sex.”
But Belkin said the Justice Department’s account of his deposition and his alleged acknowledgement of a rational basis for privacy concerns was completely off the mark.
“People who defend ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ for almost 20 years have been confusing up with down and left with right,” he said. “If the Obama administration lawyers think that my remarks in any way constitute an acknowledgement of the rational basis for the privacy rationale, then they need a new legal team.”
Belkin said the Justice Department neglected to mention major points about his deposition. He said he brought up men having sex with other men because he believes straight men would be having sex with men in the military regardless of the ban.
“Think for a minute about prisons,” he said. “It’s not exactly the same, but the point is not that gays are responsible for gay sex, but a lot of people have same-sex sex in the military and the privacy rationale does not take that into account. The privacy rationale is premised on the assumption that it’s only gays who having sex, so you have to get rid of the gays if you want to get rid of that kind of thing.”
Belkin also said the Justice Department misconstrued his take on there being a rational basis for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because some straight service members are uncomfortable around gay service members.
“It’s absolutely true that some heterosexual service members are uncomfortable in front of gay service members, but that in no way constitutes a rational basis for the privacy rationale because gays and lesbians are already serving with straight service members — and the conditions in the barracks and the showers are not going to change after the repeal of the ban,” he said.
The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on Frank and Belkin’s assertions that they were mischaracterized in the brief.
Frank also took issue with the Justice Department’s repeated references to experts on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with the use of quotation marks.
For example, the brief says in a footnote that “LCR’s ‘experts’ ultimately seek to challenge the wisdom of the DADT policy, a challenge that is irrelevant under rational basis review.”
Frank said the repeated reference to experts in quotation marks is “highly unusual” for the Justice Department and “may have gone too far.”
“That’s a favorite tactic of the religious right to polish their anti-intellectual credentials, and make it seem like there’s no such things as a homosexual, so they’ll put homosexual in quotes,” he said.
The Obama administration defense of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” statute against the challenge from Log Cabin is causing consternation among advocacy groups seeking to repeal the law.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said “we took a step backward” with the Justice Department brief in the move to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and that the brief “relies on arguments that were debunked and discredited in 1993, and even more so now.”
Solmonese also called on the administration to “show leadership, move the debate forward, and work with Congress to get repeal done” this year.
“While the Pentagon undertakes its review of how to implement repeal, Congress can and must move forward in repealing DADT in the same bill that put it into law more than 17 years ago — the defense authorization act,” he said. “And the president can and must provide the leadership necessary to get the law passed this year.”
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, expressed similar disappointment in a statement responding to the brief.
“SLDN understands the Justice Department’s role in defending the constitutionality of federal laws, even ones with which its leaders do not agree,” Sarvis said. “However, there continues to be a big and unnecessary disconnect between what DOJ files in court and what the president says on Capitol Hill and to his top [Department of Defense] leadership team.”
Sarvis said he wants the White House to make clear to Congress that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a priority this year for President Obama and for the president to include repeal language in budget language headed to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.
“The president’s defense budget repeal language should mirror the words in his State of the Union speech to Congress and the American people,” Sarvis said.
In a statement, Tracy Schmaler, spokesperson for the Justice Department, said the administration is defending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as “it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged.”
“The department does not pick and choose which federal laws it will defend based on any one administration’s policy preferences,” she said.
Schmaler said Obama disagrees with the underlying judgments Congress used to pass “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and noted that the president “believes and has repeatedly affirmed that [‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’] is a bad policy that harms our national security and undermines our military effectiveness.”
“The president and his administration are working with the military leadership and Congress to repeal this discriminatory [law],” she said.
U.S. Federal Courts
Judge temporarily blocks executive orders targeting LGBTQ, HIV groups
Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in federal court
A federal judge on Monday blocked the enforcement of three of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that would have threatened to defund nonprofit organizations providing health care and services for LGBTQ people and those living with HIV.
The preliminary injunction was awarded by Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in a case, San Francisco AIDS Foundation v. Trump, filed by Lambda Legal and eight other organizations.
Implementation of the executive orders — two aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion along with one targeting the transgender community — will be halted pending the outcome of the litigation challenging them.
“This is a critical win — not only for the nine organizations we represent, but for LGBTQ communities and people living with HIV across the country,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project director and senior counsel on the case.
“The court blocked anti-equity and anti-LGBTQ executive orders that seek to erase transgender people from public life, dismantle DEI efforts, and silence nonprofits delivering life-saving services,” Abrigo said. “Today’s ruling acknowledges the immense harm these policies inflict on these organizations and the people they serve and stops Trump’s orders in their tracks.”
Tigar wrote, in his 52-page decision, “While the Executive requires some degree of freedom to implement its political agenda, it is still bound by the constitution.”
“And even in the context of federal subsidies, it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous,” he said.
Without the preliminary injunction, the judge wrote, “Plaintiffs face the imminent loss of federal funding critical to their ability to provide lifesaving healthcare and support services to marginalized LGBTQ populations,” a loss that “not only threatens the survival of critical programs but also forces plaintiffs to choose between their constitutional rights and their continued existence.”
The organizations in the lawsuit are located in California (San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Los Angeles LGBT Center, GLBT Historical Society, and San Francisco Community Health Center), Arizona (Prisma Community Care), New York (The NYC LGBT Community Center), Pennsylvania (Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center), Maryland (Baltimore Safe Haven), and Wisconsin (FORGE).
U.S. Supreme Court
Activists rally for Andry Hernández Romero in front of Supreme Court
Gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly deported’ to El Salvador, described as political prisoner
More than 200 people gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday and demanded the Trump-Vance administration return to the U.S. a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who it “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador.
Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that represents Andry Hernández Romero, is among those who spoke alongside U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Human Rights Campaign Campaigns and Communications Vice President Jonathan Lovitz. Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark, Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, and Tim Miller are among those who also participated in the rally.
“Andry is a son, a brother. He’s an actor, a makeup artist,” said Toczylowski. “He is a gay man who fled Venezuela because it was not safe for him to live there as his authentic self.”
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.”
President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.” The Trump-Vance administration subsequently “forcibly removed” Hernández and hundreds of other Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Toczylowski said she believes Hernández remains at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT. Toczylowski also disputed claims that Hernández is a Tren de Aragua member.
“Andry fled persecution in Venezuela and came to the U.S. to seek protection. He has no criminal history. He is not a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. Yet because of his crown tattoos, we believe at this moment that he sits in a torture prison, a gulag, in El Salvador,” said Toczylowski. “I say we believe because we have not had any proof of life for him since the day he was put on a U.S. government-funded plane and forcibly disappeared to El Salvador.”
“Andry is not alone,” she added.
Takano noted the federal government sent his parents, grandparents, and other Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II under the Alien Enemies Act. The gay California Democrat also described Hernández as “a political prisoner, denied basic rights under a law that should have stayed in the past.”
“He is not a case number,” said Takano. “He is a person.”
Hernández had been pursuing his asylum case while at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
A hearing had been scheduled to take place on May 30, but an immigration judge the day before dismissed his case. Immigrant Defenders Law Center has said it will appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which the Justice Department oversees.
“We will not stop fighting for Andry, and I know neither will you,” said Toczylowski.
Friday’s rally took place hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi said Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump-Vance administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador, had returned to the U.S. Abrego will face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee.
National
A husband’s story: Michael Carroll reflects on life with Edmund White
Iconic author died this week; ‘no sunnier human in the world’
Unlike most gay men of my generation, I’ve only been to Fire Island twice. Even so, the memory of my first visit has never left me. The scenery was lovely, and the boys were sublime — but what stood out wasn’t the beach or the parties. It was a quiet afternoon spent sipping gin and tonics in a mid-century modern cottage tucked away from the sand and sun.
Despite Fire Island’s reputation for hedonism, our meeting was more accident than escapade. Michael Carroll — a Facebook friend I’d chatted with but never met — mentioned that he and his husband, Ed, would be there that weekend, too. We agreed to meet for a drink. On a whim, I checked his profile and froze. Ed was author Edmund White.
I packed a signed copy of Carroll’s “Little Reef” and a dog-eared hardback of “A Boy’s Own Story,” its spine nearly broken from rereads. I was excited to meet both men and talk about writing, even briefly.
Yesterday, I woke to the news that Ed had passed away. Ironically, my first thought was of Michael.
This week, tributes to Edmund White are everywhere — rightly celebrating his towering legacy as a novelist, essayist, and cultural icon. I’ve read all of his books, and I could never do justice to the scope of a career that defined and chronicled queer life for more than half a century. I’ll leave that to better-prepared journalists.
But in those many memorials, I’ve noticed something missing. When Michael Carroll is mentioned, it’s usually just a passing reference: “White’s partner of thirty years, twenty-five years his junior.” And yet, in the brief time I spent with this couple on Fire Island, it was clear to me that Michael was more than a footnote — he was Ed’s anchor, editor, companion, and champion. He was the one who knew his husband best.
They met in 1995 after Michael wrote Ed a fan letter to tell him he was coming to Paris. “He’d lost the great love of his life a year before,” Michael told me. “In one way, I filled a space. Understand, I worshiped this man and still do.”
When I asked whether there was a version of Ed only he knew, Michael answered without hesitation: “No sunnier human in the world, obvious to us and to people who’ve only just or never met him. No dark side. Psychology had helped erase that, I think, or buffed it smooth.”
Despite the age difference and divergent career arcs, their relationship was intellectually and emotionally symbiotic. “He made me want to be elegant and brainy; I didn’t quite reach that, so it led me to a slightly pastel minimalism,” Michael said. “He made me question my received ideas. He set me free to have sex with whoever I wanted. He vouchsafed my moods when they didn’t wobble off axis. Ultimately, I encouraged him to write more minimalistically, keep up the emotional complexity, and sleep with anyone he wanted to — partly because I wanted to do that too.”
Fully open, it was a committed relationship that defied conventional categories. Ed once described it as “probably like an 18th-century marriage in France.” Michael elaborated: “It means marriage with strong emotion — or at least a tolerance for one another — but no sex; sex with others. I think.”
That freedom, though, was always anchored in deep devotion and care — and a mutual understanding that went far beyond art, philosophy, or sex. “He believed in freedom and desire,” Michael said, “and the two’s relationship.”
When I asked what all the essays and articles hadn’t yet captured, Michael paused. “Maybe that his writing was tightly knotted, but that his true personality was vulnerable, and that he had the defense mechanisms of cheer and optimism to conceal that vulnerability. But it was in his eyes.”
The moment that captured who Ed was to him came at the end. “When he was dying, his second-to-last sentence (garbled then repeated) was, ‘Don’t forget to pay Merci,’ the cleaning lady coming the next day. We had had a rough day, and I was popping off like a coach or dad about getting angry at his weakness and pushing through it. He took it almost like a pack mule.”
Edmund White’s work shaped generations — it gave us language for desire, shame, wit, and liberation. But what lingers just as powerfully is the extraordinary life Ed lived with a man who saw him not only as a literary giant but as a real person: sunny, complex, vulnerable, generous.
In the end, Ed’s final words to his husband weren’t about his books or his legacy. They were about care, decency, and love. “You’re good,” he told Michael—a benediction, a farewell, maybe even a thank-you.
And now, as the world celebrates the prolific writer and cultural icon Edmund White, it feels just as important to remember the man and the person who knew him best. Not just the story but the characters who stayed to see it through to the end.
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