Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

DADT Claims Another Victim: Gay Sailor August Provost

august-provostBeaumont, TX – East Texas is not what an informed person would call a hotbed of liberalism.  But the East Texas aunt of murdered gay sailor, August Provost, is speaking out against the investigation of the Navy into her nephew’s execution-style murder at Camp Pendleton, California.  Rose Roy of Beaumont claims that a full year before his murder, Seaman August Provost complained that he was being harassed for being gay.  Provost’s lover has corroborated the same story when he spoke out to the press on July 4.  Mrs. Roy and other family members encouraged Seaman Provost to document the incidents and inform his superiors in the Navy about them, but she found out that he was afraid to do so because of the military ban on homosexuality, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).  She told reporters for KBMT News that he was discouraged by the possibility that the Navy would have launched an investigation into his private life, so he didn’t pursue the matter officially.  Now, the Navy is discouraging any suggestion that Provost, an African American patriot from Houston, TX, was murdered because of his sexual orientation.  A spokesman refuses to give any other motive for the killing.  Provost was shot multiple times, and his corpse was set afire in a guard shack in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence.  According to statistics kept by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), nearly 13,000 members of the U.S. Military have been discharged under the provisions of the 1993 DADT law.  That amounts to about one person each and every day.  Since President Barak Obama was inaugurated, 284 Americans have been discharged from the military thanks to DADT.  The untold story is the toll in lives lost because of murders that could possibly have been prevented were DADT not in place, not to mention the number of suicides among LGBTQ sailors, soldiers, airmen, coast guardsmen, and marines.

July 6, 2009 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, California, DADT, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Texas, U.S. Navy, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, gay men, harassment, immolation, military | , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments Yet