(HUFFINGTON POST) As gay and lesbian service members celebrate the end of the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy at their first ever professional conference here this weekend, some plan to strike a pose for marriage rights that still are beyond their reach.
The NOH8 Campaign will be on hand Friday at the OutServe Armed Forces Leadership Summit to shoot portraits of participants who want to join the movement to overturn Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. The photographic silent protest features subjects with duct tape over their mouths to symbolize that their voice has been silenced by the ballot measure.
More than 13,000 people have joined the protest, from regular people who live in California and across the country to politicians, law enforcement officers, artists and celebrities. Cindy McCain and her daughter Meghan are among the high-profile people featured in the campaign, even though her husband (and Meghan’s father) Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) opposes same-sex marriage and led the opposition to repealing DADT in the Senate.
Several former service members who were discharged under DADT also have posed for NOH8, including Army Lt. Dan Choi,. Other former military members, like retired Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, have also been shot.
But this may mark the first time active-duty service members are stepping before the cameras to support this cause — perhaps raising questions about how far military personnel are allowed to go when it comes to politics.
Under a Defense Department directive governing political activity by members of the armed forces, full-time, active-duty personnel are forbidden from endorsing “a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.” They also may not “participate in any radio, television, or other program or group discussion as an advocate for or against a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.”
Though polls show that more Democrats than Republicans support marriage equality, NOH8 sees the issue as a non-partisan one — as do Laura Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and a growing number of Republicans — meaning that participation in the campaign shouldn’t run afoul of that particular provision.
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