You don’t have be asked or to tell to be kicked out anyway

Jene Newsome, ex-Air Force sergeant outed by meddling cops

Here’s an infuriating story from the front-lines of the battle to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: a female Air Force sergeant who never said anything about her being a lesbian to anyone – ie. who followed all the (archaic and unfair) rules – was discharged anyway when cops dispatched to her South Dakotan home caught sight of her marriage certificate to another woman – whilst peering through the windows of her house – and apparently thought it was their business to contact the military with this information.

The Rapid City Police Department says Newsome, an aircraft armament system craftsman who spent nine years in the Air Force, was not cooperative when they showed up at her home in November with an arrest warrant for her partner, who was wanted on theft charges in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Newsome was at work at the base at the time and refused to immediately come home and assist the officers in finding her partner, whom she married in Iowa - where gay marriage is legal - in October.

Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome's home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.

"It's an emotional issue and it's unfortunate that Newsome lost her job, but I disagree with the notion that our department might be expected to ignore the license, or not document the license, or withhold it from the Air Force once we did know about it," Allender said Saturday. "It was a part of the case, part of the report and the Air Force was privileged to the information."

There is so much wrong with this story that it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, when cops are chasing a suspect on unspecified charges of theft, I find it hard to believe that whom their suspect may or may not be married to could be of any relevance to their case, unless specified otherwise. Second, they had absolutely no business contacting the military with their revelation that Newsome was a lesbian. It was of no relevance to their investigation; for fuck’s sake, it wasn’t even concerning their actual target. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the fact that the military actually acted on this information and canned Newsome’s career is a direct violation of the military’s promise to disregard third-party reports of their members being gay, a policy intended to try and minimize incidents where both straight and gay members could be “outed” by random outsiders with an ax to grind.

Naturally, the self-righteous cops are having their asses covered as, apparently, revealing personal information about a person unrelated to their investigation to said person’s employer with the knowledge that such information would only result in the person getting fired thanks to absurd anti-gay laws, is considered “act[ing] appropriately”. Thankfully, though, Newsome has hired the ACLU to sue the department for acting in such a decidedly inappropriate manner. They can’t go after the military, of course, as the military simply followed its own rules, however unjust they may be. With a little luck, though, maybe these interfering cops may be taught a bit of a lesson about learning to mind their own bloody business and not wreck someone else’s career over such trivial information.

(via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)