SAN DIEGO (AP) — When he left the Bush administration in 2008, Clarke R. Cooper decided he had to raise his voice.
The decorated Iraq war veteran says he had been serving in the Army, with some in his unit aware that he was gay. And yet, no one had ever tried to get the officer discharged under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Two years later, Cooper finds himself leading a 19,000-member group that has managed to accomplish what their fellow gay rights activists on the left have not — bring the 1993 Clinton-era law closer than it has ever been to being abolished.
A federal judge ordered the Pentagon to stop its enforcement. An appeals court has temporarily frozen that order while it considers a government request to suspend it pending an appeal.
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