PHOTO: Private
Manning at the time of their arraignment. Courtesy [Private] Manning Support Network.
For over 18
months, an Army soldier was held as a political prisoner by the U.S. government
with no trial. This soldier is accused of sharing classified information with
the world media through the Web site WikiLeaks. There is much about this story
that is not well known, including the guilt or innocence of Private Manning.
The members of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) want to
make it clear that we support Private Manning, regardless of the degree of
responsibility for sharing classified information, regardless of the outcome of
the so-called “court-martial” Manning is facing, and regardless of his or her
gender identity.
In September
2010 S.A.M.E. was listed with other organizations as a signatory to an open
letter calling for Private Manning’s release, and support for his or her
alleged action in releasing the video “Collateral Murder,” which, according to
former National Lawyers’ Guild president Marjorie Cohn, showed evidence of
several U.S. military violations of the Geneva Convention. As an organization,
we continue to lead rallies and marches for Private Manning for several
reasons. First and foremost, many of us feel that if Private Manning did in
fact leak the video “Collateral Murder,” the so-called “U.S. Embassy Cables,”
or the “Afghan War Diaries,” then Manning should be protected as a
whistleblower and thanked for showing courage in exposing war crimes and other
rampant forms of corruption. We stand up for anyone who makes such bold efforts
to hold the government accountable for criminal behavior. We respect and
recognize the noble rationale expressed in the words often attributed to
Manning through a chat-log: “I want people to see the truth … because without
information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
Many of us in
the LGBT [Queer] community know first-hand the violence that arises when people
dehumanize others. Manning has been dehumanized and abused by an embarrassed
U.S. military machine. According to the British newspaper The Guardian (April 10, 2011), 250 top U.S. legal scholars
describe the treatment this soldier has been subjected to — including forced
nudity, sleep deprivation, and isolation — as “torture.” No person from
anywhere in the world should be subjected to torture, ever. We stand against
the barbaric and illegal treatment of Manning, which invalidates the legal
process against Manning and exposes the vindictive nature of this soldier’s
“court-martial.”
If the
allegations are true, Manning would have faced a crisis of conscience that
would wither even the most moral among us. But there is another personal trial
that may trump Manning’s ethical one. Some of the chat-logs and courtroom
testimony indicates that Manning was questioning his or her gender identity. As
most Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual people will tell you, “coming out of the closet”
is a frightening experience under the best of circumstances. For Manning, he or
she is isolated from supportive friends and family, employed and imprisoned by
a giant entity that considers Transgender identity a condition of disease, and
is afforded no level of privacy or respite.
We respect the
right to privacy of gender or sexual identity for everyone, and barring a
public affirmation by Manning, we choose to adopt a gender-neutral reference as
we have here in this letter. Furthermore, we want to state unequivocally that
no matter how Manning identifies, as Bradley or Breanna, Private Manning is one
of the great heroes of our time, comparable to Daniel Ellsberg. We demand an
end to the biased “trials” and imprisonment, and furthermore, we call for the
initiation of criminal proceedings against those whose war crimes and other
illegal behavior the aforementioned WikiLeaks communications have exposed.
