He hasn’t been invited to any major candidate debates, but dark-horse Republican presidential hopeful Charles Elson “Buddy” Roemer III has at least one thing to say that LGBT voters will want to hear: He believes in equal pay and benefits for married military personal, regardless of their spouse’s gender.
Currently, even though same-sex marriage is legal in a number of states, only soldiers married to opposite-sex partners are eligible to receive health care, housing, food and numerous other benefits for their families. (According to Marriage Equality USA, a sailor, soldier or airman with a same-sex spouse can lose up to $250,000 over the course of their career.)
But don’t mark that ballot yet: Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, also says if elected he would reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Which means he wants married gay and lesbian military folk to get their fair share of benefits, but they’d have to live in secret at the same time. How exactly would that work? “Private Simmons has requested to list his roommate, Steve, as his next of kin. Don’t ask why!”
Reminds us of that old joke about military intelligence being an oxymoron.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Jack E. Jett
Is it odd to anyone else to hear something that should just be common sense being discussed as some sort of special right? Like..yeah I believe it is okay for gay people to drive a car ..but no more that 10 miles a day. After a while it starts to get old begging for bread crumbs and thinking someone is a hero when thew throw us a few.
Jim Hlavac
When he was governor I had a few dealings with Roemer, and his hot son Chad, and there was always the rumor that the reason that the elder Roemer’s wife divorced him was that he was found by her in bed with a male state trooper in the governor’s mansion. Just a little smoke; no fire; but still, that rumor. I still hear it, from time to time. Then he got remarried, and re-divorced, and is on wife #3, to get family values, um, straight, I’m sure. Still, he’s just another divorcee strongly for any marriage but my own. But then again, he was governor when it was a crime to be gay in Louisiana, 10 years at hard labor penalty for a single smooch even, and was derelict in his duty, by not saying a thing about the New Orleans police, and every other police force in Louisiana, protecting the gay bars from assault by the crazed heteros. With the state police adding protection to the big gay events, too. Ah, the hypocrisy of the law and politicians.