OutServe-SLDN Re-brands its Mission Statement and Officially Creates "Members"

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Change is inevitable, and in order to stay current, stay relevant and continue to be tuned in to our members, we too must change. In a series of strategic meetings over the past six months, the OutServe-Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) Board of Directors has taken a serious look at our organization. We are excited to announce that OutServe-SLDN has a new mission statement that completely changes our focus, while remaining true to the people we serve. We are excited to share it with you:

OutServe-SLDN represents the U.S. LGBT military community worldwide. Our mission is to: educate the community, provide legal services, advocate for authentic transgender service, provide developmental opportunities, support members and local chapters, communicate effectively, and work towards equality for all.

We have fundamentally changed our organization to be more member-focused while still being faithful to the promises we have made in the past. You can see our complete new organization posted here. This will be evolving as we fine-tune our organization.

By forming committees, each with its own strategic initiatives, our future becomes more connected to each of you. The updates and future plans in each of our new committees are described below.

Education

• Develop training materials for the DoD and DHS to provide to commanders, chapels and equal opportunity offices, just to name a few

• Develop partnerships to teach the entire community about transgenderism and how it affects military service.

• Support pride events worldwide so OutServe-SLDN can pass along information to the greater community  

Advocacy & Legal Services

• Starting in February, we hired the New Orleans law firm, Delaney and Robb, to take on the legal services portion of what we provide. Since then, they have processed 109 clients on a variety on LGBT military issues. Read more about how we gave a marine his dying wish here.

• Developing partnerships to determine a path to authentic transgender service and work to achieve that.  

Professional Development

• Mentor our members to better themselves

• We are in the final stages of determining the location for our annual leadership conference. Be on the lookout for more information soon.  

Chapter and Member Services

• The OutServe-SLDN Board of Directors voted to amend the bylaws to allow members to join the organization. A member is simply defined as someone who supports our cause.

• Just last month the OutServe-SLDN Board of Directors voted to hire Your Membership, a back-end software company. We will be completely redoing our website and for the first time will allow you to join as an official member. There will be ways to connect with other members along with finding online resources and more at our completely redesigned website! We hope to launch this new website by 1 August 2014.  

Public Affairs

• Communicating effectively is key to any organization and we are committed to doing just that. We want to give our members beneficial and timely information. 

How can you help?

Volunteer your time. Right now we have no paid staff and the all-volunteer board of directors, military advisory council and chapter leaders are doing all of the work. If there is an area that interests you, contact the committee chair and get involved! To inquire how you can help please contact us by clicking here.

Become a member. Once we roll out our new membership campaign, become a member. Anyone is welcome and it is FREE! Look for updates on this in the coming months!

Donate to our cause. This can be through optional membership dues, a one time gift or a recurring donation. Please click here if you wish to donate. What does your donation go towards you ask?
Fund our team of lawyers at Delaney and Robb that provide key legal services.
Fund Pride for our local chapters so that we can march in the parades and have booths to pass out information, meet people, answer questions and engage our local communities. Our goal is to be able to fund pride at ten key locations this year. Some of these pride events cost upwards of $1,500 to march in the parade and to have a booth. Banners cost about $85 a piece. As you can see, having a presence at pride is not cheap.
Fund education and training modules to better prepare our military and government to successfully handle LGBT-specific questions and incidents.

Hire a full time staff that can be dedicated to preforming OutServe-SLDN’s missions

This is an exciting time for OutServe-SLDN and we hope you will be as much a part of our future as you have been our past.

Never Giving Up,

John and Jeff

OutServe-SLDN co-chairmen of the board

Afterschool health program, thanks for the great page!

(I was sent the following email and did indeed include the link on my website. I'm always down with helping out kids and promoting health and fitness ~ Brandon)

I found your web page (http://www.mcguires5.com/miscellaneous-links) while searching online for information on health and fitness... there's some great stuff on there; thank you for your information!

I work with a group of students at an afterschool program, and we've recently been focusing on different health topics (some of them don't come from strong family households) so they've learned quite a lot about nutritious foods and taking care of their health. Now that it's getting warmer out we've been focusing more on fitness and they love it!

One of the kids (Andrew) found a great set of calculators that would fit in well with your information: "Fitness, Nutrition, and Lifestyle Calculators for Positive Mental Health" - http://www.morningsiderecovery.com/educational-resources/fitness-nutrition-and-lifestyle-calculators-for-positive-mental-health/

Would you mind including it on your website for me? I'd like to show my student his hard work is helping, and I think others would benefit from the information as well! Let me know if you get the chance to update, and thanks again for the helpful page!

Have a great day,

~Debbie

OutServe-SLDN & AMPA Joint Press Release Regarding Amicus Brief filed with U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

WASHINGTON, DC – OutServe-Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and the American Military Partner Association (AMPA) today jointly filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the case of Bostic v. Schaefer, decided by a federal district court in Virginia, arguing that the uneven patchwork of states providing marriage equality harms military families, undermines national security, complicates the payment of earned veterans benefits, and harms veterans. The brief, on which the law firm Chadbourne & Parke serves as counsel, urges the Court to end the discrimination caused by the lack of marriage equality by recognizing a constitutional right for people of the same gender to marry on the same terms as opposite-gender couples.

“Our gay and lesbian service members put their lives on the line for every state in our union, and it’s shameful that they and their families are treated as second-class by some of the governments of those states,” said Stephen Peters, president of AMPA. “Our military families deserve better than to have to worry about where in America they will be stationed, and our veterans certainly deserve access to the benefits they earned serving our nation, no matter what state they live in.”

"Our families are no different from any other families in the Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs and they deserve to be treated the same,” said Jeffrey Mueller, Co-Chairman of the OutServe-SLDN board. “The extra burden of marriage inequality is affecting military readiness and ultimately affects our national defense. Moving with the military is hard enough, but the added stress of moving to a state that will not recognize your marriage affects their ability to do their job and just is not right. All military families should be treated the same no matter where they serve our great country."

The brief asserts that: "While the strain of frequent moves impacts the recruitment and retention of opposite-sex married couples in the military, that impact is more profound on same-sex married couples in the military. No legally married couple would look fondly upon a move from a state where the couples' marriage is recognized to a state where their marriage is annulled for state-law purposes.... (T)he lack of uniform marriage recognition laws from state to state for same-sex married couples poses a threat to veterans and their families.... Title 38, which confers veterans' benefits, is inartfully drafted and Veterans Affairs ("VA") is struggling to make sense of it. Consequently, veterans' benefits have not yet been forthcoming to all married gay and lesbian service members.... The lack of marriage recognition is a strain on these military families, and an unnecessary distraction for service members who all too often find themselves in harm's way while trying to protect this country. Ending this discrimination by requiring states to recognize the right of same-sex couples to marry would protect these families, and best serve the needs of the modern military."

This is the second amici brief filed jointly by OutServe-SLDN and AMPA this year. As these cases reach the appellate stage, we anticipate filing similar briefs in each of the courts of appeal.

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ABOUT OUTSERVE-SLDN: OutServe-SLDN is the heir to the legacy of providing legal services to service members and veterans since 1993. From representing over 12,000 service members during the era of DADT, leading the fight to repeal DADT, through winning the federal lawsuit, McLaughlin v. Hagel, that provided benefits to same sex partners of military members, OutServe-SLDN has been on the frontlines for over 20 years. For more information, visit www.outserve-sldn.org.

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MILITARY PARTNER ASSOCIATION: The American Military Partner Association (AMPA), a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)3 organization, is the nation’s premier resource and support network for LGBT military spouses and their families. Founded and led by same-gender military partners in 2009 as the Campaign for Military Partners, AMPA is committed to education, advocacy, and support for our “modern military families.” For more information, visit www.militarypartners.org.