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Upstate IHS, 725 East Adams Street Suite 3C (3rd floor), Syracuse, NY (2025)

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725 East Adams Street Suite 3C (3rd Floor)

01/17/2025

I have supported the Equal Rights Amendment for more than 50 years, and I have long been clear that no one should be discriminated against based on their s*x. We, as a nation, must affirm and protect women’s full equality once and for all.

On January 27, 2020, the Commonwealth of Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The American Bar Association (ABA) has recognized that the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all necessary hurdles to be formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. I agree with the ABA and with leading legal constitutional scholars that the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution.

It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their s*x.

10/31/2024

Our Final LGBT History Highlight for the year, Day 31: Public Universal Friend

Public Universal Friend aka PUF, was an American preacher.

Jemima Wilkinson who would later become the Public Universal Friend, was born on November 29, 1752, in Cumberland, Rhode Island. From an early age, Wilkinson was strong and athletic, becoming an adept equestrian as a child, & remaining so in adulthood. An avid reader, Wilkinson could quote long passages of the Bible and prominent Quaker texts from memory. In the mid-1770s, Wilkinson began attending meetings with New Light Baptists who emphasized individual enlightenment and stopped attending meetings of the Society of Friends (Quakers).

In October 1776 Wilkinson contracted an epidemic disease, most likely typhus, and was bedridden and near death with a high fever. After several days, the fever broke and The Friend reported that Wilkinson had died & they had received revelations from God through two archangels who proclaimed there was "Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone". The Friend further said that Wilkinson's soul had ascended to heaven and the body had been reanimated with a new spirit charged by God with preaching his word, that of the "Public Universal Friend.”

From that time on, the Friend refused to answer to their birth name by ignoring or chastising those who insisted on using it. Identifying as neither male nor female, the Friend asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns. Followers respected these wishes; they referred only to "the Public Universal Friend" or short forms such as "the Friend" or "P.U.F." When someone asked if the Friend was male or female, the preacher replied "I am that I am.” The Friend dressed in a manner perceived to be either androgynous or masculine, in long, loose clerical robes which were most often black & a white or purple kerchief around the neck like men of the time. However, the preacher did not wear a hair-cap indoors, like women of the era.

The Friend began to travel and preach throughout Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania accompanied by their brother & sisters, all of whom were disowned by the Society of Friends. Early on, the Public Universal Friend preached that people needed to repent of their sins and be saved before an imminent Day of Judgment. The Friend did not bring a Bible to worship meetings, which were initially held outdoors or in borrowed meeting houses but preached long sections of the scriptures from memory. The meetings attracted large audiences, including some who formed a congregation of "Universal Friends", making the Friend the first American to found a religious community.

Around 1785, the Friend met Sarah and Abraham Richards. The Richards' unhappy marriage ended in 1786, when Abraham died on a visit to the Friend. Sarah, together with her infant daughter, took up residence with the Friend, adopted a similarly androgynous hairstyle, dress, and mannerisms (as did a few other close female friends), and came to be called Sarah Friend. In the mid-1780s, the Universal Friends began to plan a town for themselves in western New York. By late 1788, vanguard members of the Society had established a settlement in the Genesee River area.

The Public Universal Friend's health had been declining since the turn of the century; by 1816 the preacher had begun to suffer from a painful edema, but continued to receive visitors and give sermons. The Friend gave a final regular sermon in November 1818. The Friend died on July 1, 1819. In accordance with the Friend's wishes, only a regular meeting and no funeral service was held afterwards. The body was placed in a coffin with an oval glass window set in top, interred four days after death in a thick stone vault in the cellar of the Friend's house. The congregation's numbers dwindled due to their inability to attract new converts amid a number of legal and religious disagreements. The Society of Universal Friends disappeared by the 1860s.

10/30/2024

LGBT History Highlight Day 30: Max Wolf Valerio

Max Wolf Valerio is an American poet, memoir writer, essayist and actor.

Valerio was born in February of 1967 in Heidelberg, West Germany. Valerio identifies his mother as being of Blackfoot descent & his father is Hispano from Taos, New Mexico. Valerio is a “Treaty Indian” enrolled in the Kainai Band (Blood Band), Treaty 7, in Alberta Canada. His mother is from the Kainai Reserve, AKA the Blood Reserve. Valerio's father was in the United States Army for 20 years, which caused them to move frequently in the United States and Europe.

Growing up Max had a hard time relating to girls. He felt that he did not fit in because of his masculine nature and at times would offer to play male roles, which went unapproved by the girls that he was attempting to play with. Valerio imagined himself as a boy when growing up and could not imagine himself growing into a woman. In 1988, after discussions with a transmale friend and roommate, Valerio realized that he may be trans as well. Max found the FTM Organization in San Francisco run by Lou Sullivan and started attending meetings. Valerio was amazed by the other transmasculine people he encountered and started exploring his identity.

In 1989, Max began his personal transition journey. Valerio describes his initial exposure to information on trans identities to be exceptionally transphobic. The first book Valerio picked up was Female-to-Male Transs*xualism by Leslie Lothstein. The second book being, Janice Raymond's book The Transs*xual Empire. He states that these books paint transmen out to be mentally ill, broken, or victims of the patriarchy. From these experiences, Max decided to write his own memoir, The Testosterone Files describing the psychological, physiological, and social transformation that occurred in the first five years of his journey.

One of the main themes of the book is the role of testosterone in his transition. The book is organized into three parts: "Beginning," "Before Testosterone," and "After Testosterone." In the prologue, Valerio uses an in-depth narration for the reader to give a sense of what it is like to be trans. Valerio discusses the physical changes occurring that have allowed him to understand what it feels like to experience ‘masculinity.’ The second section, "Before Testosterone", shows what led Valerio to decide to transition. Valerio describes the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of his mother and father. The third section, "After Testosterone", is one written so that the readers can feel Valerio's emotional, social, and perceptual transition from female to male.

Valerio has written several other books and numerous works of poetry as well as participated in multiple documentaries about his experiences. Allowing individuals to have a positive understanding of what it means to be a transman and to ‘transition.’

10/29/2024

LGBT History Highlight Day 29: Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884, in Manhattan to socialites Anna Rebecca Hall and Elliott Roosevelt. Through her father, she was a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. Her mother nicknamed her "Granny" because she acted in such a serious manner as a child. Both her parents died before she was 10; thereafter, she moved in with her grandmother in upstate New York. Roosevelt was tutored privately and with the encouragement of her aunt she was sent to Allenswood Academy at the age of 15, a private finishing school in Wimbledon, London, England.

At age 17 Roosevelt completed her formal education and returned to the United States. Shortly after her return, she encountered her father's fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on a train. The two began a secret correspondence and romance, and became engaged in 1903. The couple went on to marry and had six children, five of whom survived infancy. Roosevelt disliked having s*x with her husband. She once told her daughter Anna that it was an "ordeal to be borne". She also considered herself ill-suited to motherhood, later writing, "It did not come naturally to me to understand little children or to enjoy them".

Franklin took his first leap into politics, winning a seat in the New York State Senate. The family moved to Washington, D.C., when he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President Wilson. Life in the nation's capital kindled Eleanor's interests in policy making. She joined the board of the League of Women Voters in 1924 and became involved in Democratic Party politics. 1928, after her husband was elected governor of New York, she became actively engaged in domestic and international issues. She wrote a syndicated newspaper column titled "My Day."

In 1933, Roosevelt became First Lady of the United States, a position she held for 12 years. While she assumed traditional duties, she did not allow them to compromise her ideals. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences and in 1940 became the first to speak at a national party convention. Roosevelt maintained a heavy travel schedule in her twelve years in the White House, frequently making personal appearances at labor meetings to assure Depression-era workers that the White House was mindful of their plight. In 1939, she announced in her column that she would resign her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, after the group refused to allow Marian Anderson, a black singer, to perform in Washington's Constitution Hall. "The basic fact of segregation," Roosevelt wrote, "is itself discriminatory."

While First Lady, Roosevelt developed an intimate relationship with Lorena Hickock, a journalist who covered the White House. During this period, Roosevelt wrote daily 10- to 15-page letters to "Hick," who was planning to write a biography of the First Lady. The letters included such endearments as, "I want to put my arms around you & kiss you at the corner of your mouth," and, "I can't kiss you, so I kiss your 'picture' good night and good morning!" Compromised as a reporter, Hickok soon resigned her position with the AP to be closer to Roosevelt, who secured her a job as an investigator for a New Deal program.

Eleanor Roosevelt's commitment to public service continued after her husband’s death in 1945. President Truman named her a delegate to the United Nations, where she was elected chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights. In that position, she helped draft the influential Universal Declaration on Human Rights. President Kennedy created a new Presidential Commission on the Status of Women to which he appointed Roosevelt to chair the commission. This was Roosevelt's last public position.

In April 1960, Roosevelt was diagnosed with aplastic anemia soon after being struck by a car in New York City. In 1962, she was given steroids, which activated a dormant case of tuberculosis. She died, aged 78, of resulting cardiac failure at her Manhattan home

10/28/2024

LGBT History Highlight Day 28: Lillian Faderman

Lillian Faderman is an American historian whose books on le***an history and LGBT history have earned critical praise and awards.

Faderman was born in New York during World War II and raised by her mother and aunt, Latvian Jewish immigrants who worked in the garment industry. The remainder of her family died in Europe during the Holocaust. Her family moved with her to Los Angeles where, with her mother's encouragement, Lillian took acting classes. Before she graduated from Hollywood High School, she married a gay man much older than herself—a marriage that lasted less than a year. Faderman began acting and modeling and discovered the underground gay bar scene. She bravely came out as a le***an in 1956 during the Lavender Scare, a challenging period for gay Americans that was closely tied to McCarthyism.

Faderman went on to study at UC Berkeley. Using pseudonyms such as Gigi Frost, Faderman did n**e modeling and made softcore n**e film loops which paid for her education. After graduating from Berkeley, Faderman co-led the creation of Fresno State University’s Gender Studies department. There, she combined her experiences as a working-class le***an, literature obsessive, and former stripper to craft curricula that demanded space for the overlooked and erased. She then attended UCLA and became an English professor at California State University Fresno. Toward that end, she co-edited her first published work, an anthology of multi-ethnic literature for the college classroom. Released in 1969, it was one of the first anthologies of its kind.

Although Faderman longed to write about s*xual minorities & homophobia in the 1960s, doing such work proved to be difficult. In the 1970s, however, as feminism entered serious academic discourse, Faderman became one of the first academics to publish books about female same-s*x relationships. A pioneering authority on LGBT history and literature, Faderman has written 11 books.

Among other recognition, she has received six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards, and several prestigious lifetime achievement awards for her scholarship, including the James Brudner Award from Yale University. The New York Times honored her books “Surpassing the Love of Men” (1981), “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers” (1991) and “The Gay Revolution” (2015) on its list of Notable Books of the Year. The Guardian named “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers,” about le***an life in the 20th century, one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History and “The Gay Revolution” one of the Six Top Books of LGBT Life.

Faderman retired in 2007 and serves as a historian in residence for the Lambda Archives of San Diego. Recently, she has worked to document q***r bars & clubs that defined her youth in LA in a project known as ‘Q***r Maps LA.’

She has a son, Avrom, and lives with her partner of more than 45 years, Phyllis Irwin.

10/28/2024

LGBT History Highlight Day 27: BD Wong

BD Wong is an award-winning actor best known for his television roles on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Oz,” and his Broadway debut in “M. Butterfly.”

Bradley Darryl Wong was born on October 24, 1960 and raised in San Francisco, California. Wong attended Lincoln High School, where he discovered his love of acting and starred as the lead in numerous school plays. He went on to attend San Francisco State University in the 1970s, where he was the only Asian American in the theater department and felt that there were no roles for him.
In 1988, Wong made his Broadway debut in “M. Butterfly,” for which he received the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Clarence Derwent Award and Theatre World Award. He is the only actor to be honored with all five awards for the same performance.

In 1993, Wong received rave reviews for his role opposite Sir Ian Mckellan in the HBO production “And the Band Played On.” From 1994 to 1995, Wong costarred with Margaret Cho in “All American Girl,” the first American situation comedy on network television to deal with the Asian-American experience. Most notably, Wong joined the cast of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” as psychiatrist Dr. George Huang in 2002. Wong announced his departure from the cast of Law & Order: SVU in July 2011 but returned as guest star in season 13. At the 2008 Asian Excellence Awards, Wong was recognized as Outstanding Television Actor for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

On the silver screen, Wong has appeared in “The Father of the Bride” (1991), “Jurassic Park” (1993), and “Executive Decision” (1996). He was the voice of Captain Li Shang in the animated film “Mulan” (1998) and its sequel.

In 1999, Wong and his then-partner, talent agent Richie Jackson, gave birth to twin sons via a surrogate mother. One of the boys died soon after delivery. Jackson Foo Wong, the surviving twin, inspired Wong to write his memoir, “Following Foo.” The book served as Wong’s official coming out. However in 2004, Wong and Jackson ended their relationship but continue to be communitive coparents. His son Jackson Foo is also gay, having come out at age 15. Wong has been a visible AIDS and LGBT civil rights activist, hosting fund-raisers and appearing at community events. He donates his time and resources to a number of LGBT and arts-related charities, such as the Ali Forney Center, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Materials for the Arts, and Rosie's Theater Kids, of which he is also a board member. In 2003, he received GLAAD’s Davidson/Valentini Award for making a difference in promoting equal rights.

On October 7, 2018, Wong married Richert John Frederickson Schnorr, his partner of eight years.

10/27/2024

LGBTQ History Highlight Day 26: Joyce Hunter

Joyce Hunter is a gay pioneer who helped organize the first National March on Washington for Le***an and Gay Rights and cofounded the first public high school for LGBTQ students.

Hunter, growing up in the Bronx, New York, survived a difficult early life. She was born in a home for u***d mothers to her Orthodox Jewish mother who was 16. Her father was African American. She spent much of her childhood, ages 5 to 14, in an orphanage before leaving and returning to live with her parents. After spending her 18th birthday in a psychiatric hospital, Hunter began seeing a therapist because she ‘didn’t want to be gay’ and their suggestion was to get married; and so she did. She married and became a mother in her 20s. She remained married for 13 years before finally leaving but had relationships with women throughout that time. By her 30s she had established herself as a trailblazing LGBT activist.

Joyce started her advocacy with Le***ans Rising at Hunter College. She was the ‘non-student’ face of the group in order to protect the future careers of the students involved. In the 1970s, based on the black civil rights movement, activists sought to create a national march on Washington for le***an and gay rights. In the summer of 1978, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk assumed leadership of that vision. After his assassination in November 1978, approximately 300 activists, Hunter included, convened the Philadelphia Conference to fulfill Milk’s dream of a march on the National Mall. On October 12, 1979, more than 100,000 activists attended the National March on Washington for Le***an and Gay Rights. The demonstration helped define a national civil rights movement.

Also In 1979, Hunter became a founding member of the Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York, created chiefly to serve at-risk LGBT youth. As the Institute’s director and clinical supervisor of social work, she helped create a counseling program, a drop-in center, and an outreach project. In 1985 with the Hetrick-Martin Institute and Steve Ashkinazy of the Stonewall Democratic Club, Hunter cofounded the nation’s first LGBTQ high school, the Harvey Milk High School, in New York City’s East Village. The same year, as a co-leader of the Coalition for Le***an and Gay Rights, Hunter helped successfully lobby the New York City Council for a gay and le***an nondiscrimination ordinance—one of the first municipal ordinances of its kind in the nation.

Hunter has served as Human Rights Commissioner of New York City and on the New York State Governor's Task Force on Le***an and Gay Concerns. She founded the Women’s Caucus of the International AIDS Society. She is an assistant clinical professor of sociomedical sciences in psychiatry and psychiatric social work and a research scientist at the HIV Center at Columbia University. She conducts HIV behavioral research and is the principal investigator of a community-based HIV prevention project for LGBT students.

10/25/2024

LGBT History Day 25: Emma D'Arcy

Emma D'Arcy is an English actor known for their roles in Wanderlust, Truth Seekers & House of the Dragon.

D'Arcy was born on 27 June 1992 in the North London Borough of Enfield. In year six, they played Titania in a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which they credit for introducing them to acting. They studied Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art and graduated in 2011. While at university, they took up theatre where they started as a set designer and moved into acting and directing.

D'Arcy has appeared in several theatre productions; their earliest appearances were in Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman at the Oxford Playhouse & Romeo and Juliet at London's Southwark Playhouse. In 2016, D'Arcy played Tammy Frazier in Callisto: A Q***r Epic, directed by Thomas Bailey, at the Arcola Theatre. They went on to star in several other productions in London before returning to the Arcola theatre as Lucrezia in an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. D'Arcy was lauded for their "striking" performance.

D'Arcy made their television debut as Naomi Richards in the Netflix series, Wanderlust. Following this they took on roles in two more Amazon Prime releases; Hanna and Truth Seekers. In December 2020, it was announced that D'Arcy had been cast as Rhaenyra Targaryen in the HBO fantasy series House of the Dragon, a Game of Thrones prequel and adaptation of George R. R. Martin's companion book Fire & Blood. D'Arcy admitted that while they had been aware of Game of Thrones, they had not actually seen the House of the Dragon predecessor until after being cast in the role of Rhaenyra. They had however read Fire & Blood.

House of the Dragon’s ten-episode first season debuted in August 2022. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Ryan Condal revealed D'Arcy's Rhaenyra to be, House of the Dragon's most important character, with director Miguel Sapochnik labeling D'Arcy "the face of the show." D'Arcy's take on the character was an instant hit garnering them widespread critical acclaim with critics including it among some of the best performances of the year.

In November 2022, D'Arcy was honored by GQ as one of the breakout stars of the year. That same year, they were ranked as the number one breakout star of the year on IMDb's list of top breakout stars. For their performance of Rhaenyra Targaryen, they received a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama, but lost out to Zendaya for her role in Euphoria. In 2023, The Huffington Post included D'Arcy on its list of rising stars and in April of that year, they were ranked fifth on the Radio Times list of the top 100 most influential people in television.

10/24/2024

LGBTQ History Month Day 24: Morty Manford

Morty Manford was an activist and key strategist in the early days of the gay rights movement, a Legal Aid lawyer, and an Assistant Attorney General of New York State.

Born in New York City in 1950, Manford was a graduate of Bayside High School in Queens. Morty quickly became heavily involved in the gay rights movement and proved to be a pivotal figure in the growth of the movement. On the night of June 28, 1969, Manford was at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village when the police came to raid it. This event came to be known as The Stonewall Riots. The rioting sent a shockwave through New York's gay community and the feeling of solidarity that was forged in its wake gave rise to the modern gay rights movement.

Manford followed up his role as a witness to the riots by organizing one of the first campus gay groups in the country, Gay People at Columbia, around the issue of the gay lounge at Columbia University. He also began writing and publicly speaking on the principles and goals of the gay rights movement. He arraigned and coordinated demonstrations on both local & national issues traveling across the country speaking to anyone and everyone. Manford also was involved in the creation of a wide spectrum of gay support groups. The proliferation of such groups, and spinoffs such as employment counseling, legal and medical advice, and assistance with housing, culminated in the acquisition by the New York Gay Activists Alliance of a large building on Wooster Street for use as a social/advocacy meeting place for gay men and le***ans.

In May of 1972, he accused Michael Maye, President of the Firefighters' Union, and a former prizefighter, of assaulting him at a gay rights demonstration at the Inner Circle Dinner. This was sponsored by current & former public officials & business executives. Manford & other protesters were ejected from the event when some attendees followed them into the hallway & a fight broke out. Several city officials who witnessed the incident testified at the trial that Mr. Maye threw Mr. Manford down an escalator, then kicked and stomped him. Maye ended up being acquitted on the assault charges against him but it did draw attention to the need for gay-rights protection laws.

The Inner Circle Affair was also the catalyst for a Letter to the Editor in the New York Post by Manford’s mother, Jeanne titled ‘I have a homos*xual son and I love him.’ In the post, she identified herself as the mother of a gay protester and complained of police inaction. On June 25, she participated with her son in the New York Pride March, carrying a hand-lettered sign that read "Parents of G**s Unite in Support for Our Children". The response was overwhelming. Prompted by this enthusiastic reception, Manford and her husband developed an idea for an organization of the parents of g**s and le***ans which later became known as PFLAG.

In 1981 Manford graduated from the Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University and in 1983 he was accepted before the Bar of the State of New York. He went on to become a staff attorney and supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York. In 1987 he became an Assistant Attorney General of the State of New York.

Manford died in 1992 at the age of forty-two from AIDS-related complications.

10/22/2024

LGBT History Month Day 22: Lucy Hicks Anderson

Lucy Hicks Anderson was an American socialite, chef, and philanthropist.

Lucy Lawson was born in Waddy, Kentucky on January 9, 1886. From a very early age, Anderson was adamant that she was not male, identifying as female in a time before the term transgender existed, and naming herself Lucy. Doctors told Anderson's parents to let her live as a young woman, so they did, and she began wearing dresses to school and being known as Lucy.

At the age of 15, Anderson left school and did domestic work to support herself. At age 20, she headed west to Pecos, Texas, where she worked in a hotel, and then to New Mexico, where she married her first husband Clarence Hicks. The couple ended up relocating to Oxnard, California. Her marriage to Clarence lasted nine years, but during the course of the union, she saved enough money to buy property that was a boarding house front for a brothel. Outside of her time as a madam, she was a well-known socialite and hostess in Oxnard, and she later used her connections to avoid serious jail time. After one of her arrests, Charles Donlon, the town's leading banker, promptly bailed her out [because] he had scheduled a huge dinner party which would have collapsed dismally with Lucy in jail."

In 1945, a sailor claimed that he caught an STI from one of the women in Anderson's brothel, so all the women, including Anderson, were required to undergo medical examination. When the Ventura County district attorney learned from this examination that Anderson was transgender, he chose to try her for perjury, arguing that she lied about her s*x on her marriage license and impersonated a woman. The story was posted in the newspaper & became widely publicized after a TIME magazine article came out in 1945. During her trial for perjury, she stated, "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman," and "I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman." However, the court convicted her of perjury on her marriage license and sentenced her to 10 years of probation.

At the time, marriage in the United States was only considered legally valid if between a man and a woman, and since the courts determined that Anderson was considered male, the marriage was declared invalid. As a result, the federal government charged her with fraud for receiving the financial allotments wives of soldiers got under the GI Bill, and initially also with failing to register for the draft, until she proved she had been too old to register. At the time of this trial, she was married to Reuben Anderson. Both were tried & found guilty. Lucy was sentenced to a men's prison, where she was forbidden by court order to wear women's clothes.

After being released from prison, Anderson was barred from returning to Oxnard by the police chief, who threatened further prosecution. She and Reuben relocated to Los Angeles, where they resided quietly until her death in 1954, at the age of 68.

10/21/2024

LGBT History Month Day 21: Major Margaret Witt

Margaret Witt was a major in the United States Air Force whose federal lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

Major Witt joined the US Air Force in 1987 and in ’95 was transferred from active duty to the Reserves. Witt began a relationship with another woman in1997 which lasted for 6 years. During the time in which they were together, her partner lived approximately 250 miles from where she was stationed. Witt never disclosed her s*xual orientation but in 2004 the husband of another woman she had started seeing, outted her to the Air Force. Shortly after she was informed that she was being investigated for homos*xuality.

In November, Witt was suspended from duty, which meant that she could not receive pay, accrue points toward promotion, or accrue retirement benefits. In March 2006 Witt was advised that discharge proceedings were being initiated against her for homos*xuality. Although it was recommended that she be ‘honorably discharged,’ in April of that year she filed a lawsuit for declaratory and injunctive relief on the grounds that DADT violates substantive due process, the Equal Protection Clause, and procedural due process. District Judge Ronald Leighton dismissed Witt's suit under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for "failure to state a claim". This decision was appealed to a panel of Ninth Circuit judges.

The Court of Appeals ruled that the Air Force must prove that discharging Major Witt is necessary for purposes of military readiness. It did not get rid of DADT but, the court found that before discharging a soldier, the military must prove that the individual’s conduct actually hurt morale or jeopardized another government interest.

Witt returned to the trial court on September 13, 2010. On September 24, 2010, District Judge Leighton ruled that Witt's constitutional rights had been violated by her discharge and that she must be reinstated to the Air Force. On December 22, 2010, President Obama signed legislation passed by Congress repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Major Witt attended the signing ceremony in Washington, DC.

In a settlement announced on May 10, 2011, the Air Force agreed to drop its appeal and remove Witt's discharge from her military record. She retired from the Navy with full benefits in 2011.

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