Nice letter, Log Cabin Republicans – thanks for saying it for me.

From a straight, old, married lady and her husband, who believe love should not be outlawed.

Thanks to the Internet, I watched the mother of U.S. Army Corporal Andrew Wilfahrt (Killed In Action in Afghanistan in 2011) speak at the first conference of OutServe.org (The Association of Actively Serving LGBT Military Personnel) after the repeal of the military’s discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy. For some fifty years I have been a student of, and participant in, public speaking, oral argument, and advocacy writing. Lori Wilfahrt’s speech was elegant: graceful, dignified, and powerfully simple.

Andrew Wilfahrt’s legacy is just beginning because of the extraordinary efforts of both his parents for the cause of marriage equality. For military and civilian gay people, marriage equality would mark the end of the last major vestige of government-sanctioned discrimination in our country. The ideal of equality is baked into the soul of America. The Founding Fathers considered the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be unalienable rights, even though their own lives did not reconcile discrimination based on race, gender, and sexuality. The reconciliation of the ideal in concept with the actual experience of equality has taken hundreds of years. Andrew’s legacy now contributes to that reconciliation of equality, through the speeches of his parents (multiplied on the Internet) and conversations around “Andrew’s Round Table.”

I can imagine that the spirit of Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt is dancing for joy to experience his mom and dad speaking with such elegant power. With grace and dignity, they are embracing positions of advocacy accidentally arising because their son (who happened to be gay) had the courage to volunteer for the military, and gave his life serving a country founded on the ideal of equality.