Biden issues mass pardon for gays booted from military — after voting for ban in 1990s
WASHINGTON — President Biden issued a mass pardon Wednesday to veterans punished by the military for engaging in same-sex relationships — even though he voted as a senator for a law that banned gays and lesbians from the armed forces.
Biden, 81, announced the clemency ahead of joining pop star Elton John at the Stonewall Inn Friday in Manhattan to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the modern gay rights movement.
“I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., do hereby grant a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to persons convicted of unaggravated offenses based on consensual, private conduct with persons age 18 and older under former Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) [and of] attempts, conspiracies, and solicitations to commit such acts,” Biden wrote in the pardon proclamation.
“We can’t give an exact number, but the administration estimates that there are thousands of individuals who were convicted of consensual conduct … and who may therefore be eligible for the pardon,” a Biden aide said on a press call.
“This is a historic injustice, and the president is therefore taking this historic step to ensure that we live up to our sacred obligation to care for all service members, veterans and their families.”
Biden is hunkered down at Camp David for a full week of preparations ahead of Thursday’s CNN debate against former President Donald Trump and he did not address the mass pardon publicly or remark on his own culpability for historical discrimination in the military.
While a senator, Biden voted in 1993 for the bill containing the final iteration of the Pentagon’s ban on gay and lesbian members, known as the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which despite its name still allowed for service members to be expelled and punished if they were outed against their will.
The military’s ban on gays and lesbians ended in September 2011 after bipartisan legislation passed Congress in December 2010 to terminate the policy following a review period.
Both Biden and Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, have courted gay voters ahead of what’s expected to be a close election decided by thousands of votes in a handful of swing states — with former first lady Melania Trump hosting a Log Cabin Republicans gathering at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., in April and set to host a similar event next month at Trump Tower in New York.
Biden has had a mixed political record on LGBT rights.
He was one of 32 Senate Democrats who voted in 1996 to federally ban same-sex marriage.
Biden also voted in 1994 for a proposed rule to bar schools with federal funding from advocating “the promotion of homosexuality as a positive lifestyle alternative.”
But as vice president in 2012, Biden said that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage, helping spur fellow Democrats to also change their positions. In 2021, he repealed Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.
Biden nominated the first Senate-approved openly gay Cabinet member, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in 2021 — after Trump in 2020 appointed America’s first openly gay Cabinet-level official, acting national intelligence director Ric Grenell.
Mass pardons are rare in US history, and this will be the second issued by Biden, who just before the 2022 midterm elections issued mass clemency for people convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law, of whom none were in prison.
As a presidential candidate in 2019, Biden had promised to free “everyone” behind bars for pot and some of the estimated 2,600 federal cannabis inmates, who are mostly incarcerated for dealing the drug, said the mass pardon failed to fulfill the vow — prompting protests calling out Biden outside the White House.