On September 22, Peter Perkowski, Clinical Instructor in LSC’s Veterans Legal Clinic, testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs’ Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The hearing, billed under the umbrella of “Creating a Welcoming VA and Building Equity for Veterans Through Legislation,” was convened to review multiple pieces of legislation related to addressing the historical “stigmatization, criminalization, and ongoing exclusion and inequality for LGBTQ servicemembers and veterans.”
Perkowski (whose testimony begins at 42:30 in the video below), highlighted the countless ways that tens of thousands of LGBTQ servicemembers were harmed by VA policies, including Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, during their time in the military and for years and decades after.
“The number 14,000 gets tossed around a lot. It’s the estimated number of people separated under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The key number is 114,000—the estimated number of people involuntarily separated between WWII and 2011 due to sexual orientation. Tens of thousands more transgender veterans are not included in that number. Countless more were targeted for sexual orientation or gender identity but were separated on pretext. So many of these separations were Undesirable or Other Than Honorable, and therefore presumptively ineligible for benefits.”
– Peter Perkowski
Perkowski noted that the many injustices faced by LGBTQ veterans affect “other underserved populations, because the VA’s regulatory bars disproportionately exclude veterans of color, veterans with mental health conditions, veterans at risk of suicide, and LGBTQ veterans,” and that much work remains to restore these veterans “to a place where they can feel not discarded but welcome, not punished but valued.”
Read additional coverage of the hearing in the Washington Post: A decade after ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,” LGBTQ veterans say they still feel the effects, September 24, 2021