News Release from
Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty
Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty Submit Brief in Second
Amendment Case
(WASHINGTON, February 11, 2008) – Gays and Lesbians for Individual
Liberty (GLIL) has joined with Pink Pistols in support of the Second
Amendment rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans
by filing a friend-of-the-court brief with the United States Supreme
Court.
GLIL chairman Richard Sincere explained: “The brief was filed in
support of Dick Anthony Heller, who sued the District of Columbia to
have its draconian prohibition on private gun ownership overturned.
Heller’s rights to own a gun for self-protection were upheld by the
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty appealed
the case to the Supreme Court.”
The brief states that ‘Laws that prevent the use of firearms for
self-defense in one’s own home disproportionately impact those
individuals who are targets of hate violence due to their minority
status, whether defined by race, religion, sexual orientation, or other
characteristic.… [Not] only do members of the LGBT community have a
heightened need to possess firearms for self-protection in their homes,
the Second Amendment clearly guarantees this most basic right. This
Court should not permit the democratic majority to deprive LGBT
individuals of their essential and constitutional right to keep and bear
arms for self-defense in their own homes”
The brief also makes a unique argument, tying the denial of rights of
gay men and lesbians to possess firearms to the statutory mandate to
exclude those same citizens from military service through the “Don’t Ask
Don’t Tell” rules:
“… Interpreting the Second Amendment as recognizing a right conditioned
upon military service, where eligibility for military service is defined
by the Government, prevents the Amendment from acting as any constraint
on Government action at all. Such a result is contrary not only to the
literal text of the Amendment, but to the intentions of the Framers.
Further, in light of the current ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, such an
interpretation would completely eradicate any Second Amendment right for
members of the LGBT community.”
A number of other organizations have also submitted amicus curiae
briefs to the Supreme Court in this case, arguing in favor of an
individual right to possess firearms, including the Cato Institute,
Disabled Veterans for Self Defense, Jews for the Preservation of
Firearms Ownership, the Rutherford Institute, and a group of women
legislators and academics.
The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, Docket No. 07-290. A copy
of the Pink Pistols/GLIL brief can be accessed at
http://tinyurl.com/29uqgo.
Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty was founded in February 1991
to advance the ideas of economic and personal freedom and individual
responsibility. It has members across the United States and in several
foreign countries. GLIL previously filed an amicus brief in the Supreme
Court case of Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. For more information,
visit http://www.glil.org.
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