A Brief History
Named by President Obama as his nominee for Secretary of the Army in November 2015, Eric Fanning, a 47 year old graduate of Dartmouth and a Defense Department employee, was confirmed for the job by the US Senate on May 17, 2016, making him the first openly gay Secretary of a US Military branch.
Digging Deeper
A sexual identity activist, Fanning supports a policy of allowing transgender persons to serve in the Armed Forces and to prohibit any sort of discrimination based on a person’s sexuality or sexual identity.
The US Military had only dropped its controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in September of 2011 by Congressional legislation and the signature of President Obama.
Fanning starts his new job amidst heated national debate over the treatment of transsexual, transvestite, and transgender people.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Do you think we will ever have a transgender president?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Smith, Rob. Confessions of a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Soldier: How a Black, Gay Man Survived the Infantry, Coming Out, and the War in Iraq. RLS Books, 2017.
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