Biden needed some quick good PR so he has his team search out an easy win he could get without actually changing anything about the underlying problem. Pretty representative of his entire presidency.
Or the timing lines up with the California court case that was just recently allowed to move forward for LGBTQ+ veterans to sue the Department of Defense.
Seems more like a reaction to national news than your cynical politician thing.
On the other, I've always considered pardons to be insulting when they're being distributed to people on the receiving end of injustice, as accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt.
In the legal sense, a pardon is not an admission of guilt (see #4 ), but socially it bears the resemblance of an admission by someone who has not yet been charged or convicted. Given that these folks were already found legally guilty of a “crime” that is no longer a crime, I don’t see how accepting a pardon is an admission of anything other than they had been wronged.
But I’m just some straight cis white dude in the internet and my feelings are not the ones that matter in this matter.
What they ought to do is expunge the convictions and offer some form of recompense for the unjust treatment, but reparations aren't something our government wants to talk about.
In order to get their records changed under the pardon, individuals will need to complete an online application, which will go to their military service department. The services will then review the individual’s court-martial and service record and determine if they are eligible for the pardon; that determination will then be sent to the attorney general, acting through the Department of Justice’s pardon attorney, a US official explained.
The certificate of pardon does not automatically change someone’s discharge status. If a certificate of pardon is issued, the service member will then have to apply to their respective military department’s board of corrections to have their military records corrected.
The pardon, which CNN is first to report on, specifically grants clemency to service members who were convicted under former Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 125 — which criminalized sodomy, including between consenting adults — between 1951 and 2013 when it was rewritten by Congress.
A bad-conduct discharge, for example, given under general court-martial, can make someone ineligible for services including a VA home loan military pension, and education benefits.
The pardon is separate from the Pentagon’s ongoing review of military records for those who were discharged based on their sexual orientation, which one of the officials said did not apply to convictions under the UCMJ.
The Pentagon launched a new outreach campaign last September to reach more veterans who believe they “suffered an error or injustice” to have their military records reviewed.
“For decades, our LGBTQ+ service members were forced to hide or were prevented from serving altogether,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the time.
In order to get their records changed under the pardon, individuals will need to complete an online application, which will go to their military service department.
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