Hotline Lawyer Conflicted as Callers Object to Change in Military’s Gay Policy
Lawyer J.E. McNeil is getting a new kind of inquiry as she answers hotline calls from soldiers who want to become conscientious objectors and leave military service.
McNeil is a Quaker lawyer and executive director of the Center on Conscience & War, where she has worked the hotline for the last 11 years, the New York Times reports. A recent caller and another e-mail writer asked about leaving the military, expressing fears about serving alongside out-of-the-closet gays if the military repeals its “don’t ask, don’t tell policy.”
The House of Representatives has voted for repeal, and the issue is now being studied by the Pentagon. McNeil told the Times she felt conflicted upon receiving the call from a fearful serviceman.
“I told him I wasn’t trying to criticize, but he was already serving with gays, since there’s lots of gays in the military now,” McNeil told the Times. “I told him it was outside the norm, and I’d have to think about whether it met the legal criteria,” she said. “I won’t tell you my internal dialogue. But I will tell you I have a brother who died of AIDS and a sister who’s a lesbian.”
McNeil has since concluded that repeal of the policy won’t satisfy the legal standard for a conscientious objector claim. “In the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ situation, they’re not opposed to participating in war, they’re opposed to who they’re participating with,” she told the Times.
