(Image: Darren Manzella is an American Army Sergeant, Army medic and gay activist from Portland, New York, who has served in Iraq andKuwait and is stationed out of Fort Hood, Texas)

A new push to repeal ‘Don’t  Ask, Don’t Tell’ is underway in the Western U.S.A. The legislation, that permits gay men and women to serve in the military under the condition of keeping their sexuality silent, is increasingly coming under attack. A tour is underway, organized by Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), traveling through San Diego to Palm Springs before making stops in Las Vegas, Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs. The tour’s goal? To educate Americans on the effort to lift the ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual service personnel.

According to SLDN executive director Aubrey Sarvis, ”‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ results in the loss of thousands of talented, skilled service members our military desperately needs. We are here to engage Nevadans in the effort to lift the ban on gays in the military. Change, real change, doesn’t come from the top-down, it rises from the ground-up. Real change doesn’t start in Washington; it starts in the rest of the country, it stars right here in Las Vegas. Poll after poll show Americans favor lifting the ban, so we need to turn that support into a call for action that Congress cannot ignore.”

According to Gary Gates at UCLA’s Williams Institute, Nevada is home to nearly 10,000 lesbian and gay military veterans; 7,000 of which live in Las Vegas. An estimated 65,000 lesbian and gay service members serve on active duty and in the reserves of the United States armed forces. Since 1993, more than 12,000 men and women have been dismissed under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

For more information, visit http://www.sldn.org/.

Source: The Earth Times