“Eric brings many years of proven experience and exceptional leadership to this new role”, Obama said in a written statement.
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Thanks to a nomination from President Barack Obama, Eric Fanning will become the first openly gay secretary of the Army – or any other branch of the USA military, according to CNN.
Fanning, who must be confirmed by the Senate, has been a specialist on defense and national security issues for more than 25 years in Congress and the Pentagon. Obama introduced policies to provide benefits to same-sex partners, nominated gays and lesbians to leading executive roles, and ended the 18-year ban on gay men serving in the USA military, allowing gays to openly serve in the army. “Yet Obama is so obsessed with pandering to liberal interest groups he’s nominated an openly gay civilian to run the Army”. The 47-year-old nominee who began his career in 1996 became the US Army’s acting undersecretary in July and had served as Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s chief of staff, and the undersecretary and acting secretary of the Air Force earlier.
McHugh has been the Army’s top civilian leader since 2009.
“I know he will strengthen our Army, build on its best traditions and prepare our ground forces to confront a new generation of challenges”, Carter said.
He worked as an associate producer at CBS News during the 1990’s after having worked for the House Armed Services Committee. Before that he had served as Deputy Director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.
“Considering the tremendous struggles that LGBT Americans have faced within the Department of Defense, Fanning’s nomination is deeply significant”, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, told The Huffington Post.
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If approved, he would be the first openly gay service secretary. Those cuts would shrink the service to its smallest size of the post-World War II era.
