Late Friday afternoon, President Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Eric Fanning to be the Army’s new secretary. If confirmed he nominee would become the first openly gay civilian secretary of any branch of the military on more than an interim basis.
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“Homosexuality is not a job qualification”, Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and ordained Baptist minister, said. “The USA military is created to keep Americans safe and complete combat missions, not conduct social experiments”. Fanning has been active in gay rights and served on the board of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a group that aims to increase “the number of openly LGBT officials at all levels of government”.
“Eric brings many years of proven experience and exceptional leadership to this new role”, Obama recently expressed in a statement.
Fanning will succeed Army Secretary John McHugh, who has said he will leave the post by November 1 after six years on the job.
Eric Fanning has been nominated to be the next US Army secretary.
President of the American Military Partner Association Ashley Broadway-Mack said, “History continues to be written and equality marches forward with the nomination of an openly gay man to serve in this significantly important role”.
In the 1990s, he was on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and later a special assistant in the Immediate Office of the Secretary of Defense.
“Huckabee is so blinded by his own bigotry that he would oppose someone with two decades of national security experience just because of his sexual orientation”, said JoDee Winterhof, Human Rights Campaign’s Senior Vice President of Policy and Political Affairs.
“Eric served as my first chief of staff at the Pentagon, and it has been a privilege over the course of my career to work alongside him and watch him develop into one of our country’s most knowledgeable, dedicated, and experienced public servants”, Carter said in a statement.
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“I am grateful for his commitment to our men and women in uniform, and I am confident he will help lead America’s soldiers with distinction”, he added. “But as I said, I will wait until his confirmation hearing to assess his record on the merits”. The administration also repealed “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, a military policy that permitted homosexuals to serve as long as they kept their sexual orientation and lifestyle to themselves.
