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Charles Schoen
1926 - 2014
By
Danny Ingram |
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Charles "Chuck" Schoen, one of
the six founding members of American Veterans
for Equal Rights, passed away on February 27th,
2014, in Desert Hot Springs, California, at the
age of 88. Chuck was a Life Member of AVER and
is survived by his fellow US Navy veteran and
partner of 48 years, Jack Harris, also a Life
Member of AVER. Chuck Schoen served in the
United States Navy during World War II, the
Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Chuck enlisted in the US Navy
in, July, 1942, at the age of 17. Chuck worked
his way up from enlisted to Lieutenant JG,
serving 19 years as a nuclear specialist,
holding a top secret clearance and travelling
three times to the Mediterranean aboard aircraft
carriers. Just short of his retirement Lt.
Charles Schoen, a veteran of three wars, was
Less-Than-Honorably discharged from the Navy for
being gay. He lost his retirement and all
benefits. Some years later, working with a
private attorney, Chuck was able to upgrade his
discharge to Honorable, but he never received
the full retirement he rightfully earned as just
reward for his service to the Navy and our
nation.
In 1987 Chuck worked to form
Veterans C.A.R.E. (Council for American Rights
and Equality), one of several LGBT veterans
groups organizing to fight the ban. The
group participated in the Second National March
on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in
October, 1987. In 1990 Chuck met with five
other organizations in Minneapolis to form GLBVA
(Gay Lesbian Bisexual Veterans of America),
later AVER. That same year he travelled to
Washington, D.C. to testify on the issue of gays
in the military before the United States House
Subcommittee on Oversight and Veterans Affairs.
Chuck Schoen worked his entire
life to end discrimination against LGBT
Americans in the United States Armed Forces, and he
lived long enough to see the repeal of Don't Ask,
Don't Tell in 2011.
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Gay Marriage |
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As of mid March, a judge in
Tennessee said that bans on same sex marriage
will be just a footnote in our history.
Who would have imagined that this day would come
when gay marriage is enshrined in law in
some eighteen states and our nation's capitol
city and that heterosexual judges everywhere are
saying that banning our marriages is
unconstitutional! It was only just
yesterday, in America's history, that
heterosexual local, state, and national
officials would break out in a stinky sweat just
imagining saying something like that. An
optimist would quiver saying that this is proof
of progress in our great nation. Sure,
this is despite the fact that we've been left in
historical dust by other countries' progress long
ago. We still await our first female
president while that is ancient history even in
the most remote places on Earth from Khertek Anchimaa-Toka of Tannu Tuva in 1940,
through the more famed Isabel Peron elected
president of Argentina in 1974; and two
Jewish-American women who led other countries,
Janet Jagen elected as President of Guyana in
1997 and Golda Mier who became Prime Minister of
Israel in 1969; not to forget the first openly gay
elected Prime Ministers Jóhanna
Sigurðardóttir
in Iceland in 2009, and Elio Di Rupo
in Belgium in 2011. The list of female
and or black world leaders goes on for pages;
while here in blessed America an entire
national political party wants to disenfranchise
democracy because we dared to elect our first
black president. Where was I?
Oh yes, Gay Marriage. That has been legal in some
other countries for over a decade. Here, the
battle goes on inch by inch, city by city, state by
state as the nation trembles in anticipation of the end
of civilization. You would think that our
opponents had something better to do than worry about
who we love. Their obsession perverts religion and
American values. One cannot write about
'gay marriage' without hearing from pedantic
grammarians, lexicographers, and other drudges who
tiresomely insist that the proper term is 'same sex
marriage' because a gay person has always been allowed
to marry a person of the opposite sex.
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