Joe Tom Easley, the homosexual rights activist and lawyer who labored to repeal the navy’s “don’t ask, don’t inform” coverage and whose 2003 marriage ceremony was among the many first same-sex unions introduced in The New York Occasions, died on Feb. 13 at a hospital in Miami Seashore. He was 81.
The trigger was issues of lung illness, Mr. Easley’s husband, Peter Freiberg, mentioned on Tuesday.
Mr. Easley, who served within the Navy in the course of the Vietnam Conflict, spent years preventing for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t inform,” which was enacted in 1993 by President Invoice Clinton and allowed gays to serve within the navy below the situation that they maintain their sexuality a secret. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed away the coverage.
Mr. Easley was a md of the Servicemembers Authorized Protection Community, a gaggle that sought to finish discrimination towards homosexual navy personnel and to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t inform” coverage.
Joe Tom Easley was born on Sept. 28, 1940, in Robstown, Texas, to Tom Lee Easley and the previous Girl Hampton. He grew up in Truby, Texas, within the Forties and ’50s, when being overtly homosexual was removed from commonplace.
In 1966, when he was drafted into the Vietnam Conflict, Mr. Easley determined to enter the Navy, the place he served at an intelligence base on the Adak Island in Alaska. After a 12 months, he was advised {that a} buddy who had propositioned him for intercourse earlier than he joined the service had advised the federal government that he was homosexual, Mr. Freiberg mentioned.
In line with Mr. Freiberg, Mr. Easley’s commander advised him that he needed to kick him out as a result of gays have been barred from serving, however that “due to his exemplary service,” he would make sure that Mr. Easley obtained an honorable discharge and veteran advantages.
A graduate of Texas A&M, Mr. Easley obtained a regulation diploma from the College of Texas and a grasp’s diploma in public well being from Yale.
Though he was virtually 38 when he got here out, he sought to make up for misplaced time along with his homosexual activism by utilizing his abilities as a speaker, trainer and chief, Mr. Freiberg mentioned.
After working in Europe for 3 years for a client watchdog group that investigated price-fixing by pharmaceutical corporations, Mr. Easley moved to Washington, D.C., the place he lived within the late Nineteen Seventies and early ’80s, in keeping with his husband.
Mr. Easley was initially employed as a tenured regulation professor at American College. After he got here out in 1978, he was appointed in an assistant dean along with his educating duties. He was later a professor at what was then the Antioch College of Regulation, the place he served as an adviser to an L.G.B.T. pupil group.
He additionally turned president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Membership, a homosexual political group within the Washington space.
Mr. Easley finally left Washington for New York, when he met Mr. Freiberg and he continued his advocacy work.
From 1983 to 1987, Mr. Easley was a md of the Lambda Authorized Protection and Schooling Fund, an L.G.B.T. group. He then served as president of the Human Rights Marketing campaign Basis.
Vic Basile, a former govt director of the Human Rights Marketing campaign, mentioned in an e-mail that Mr. Easley was “instrumental in shaping its purpose of electing L.G.B.T. supportive candidates to Congress.”
On Aug. 24, 2003, lower than a 12 months after Daniel Andrew Gross and Steven Goldstein broke floor as the primary same-sex couple to have an announcement of their civil union revealed in The New York Occasions, Mr. Easley and Mr. Freiberg’s marriage, at Toronto Metropolis Corridor, was featured within the paper’s marriage ceremony pages.
Mr. Freiberg, who’s Mr. Easley’s solely quick survivor, was described within the announcement as a contract author and editor. Mr. Easley was described as a lecturer for the BAR-BRI Bar Evaluate, an organization that prepares potential attorneys for bar examinations.
Two years later, Mr. Easley gained nationwide consideration when he appeared in a front-page article in The Occasions about sponsoring an Iraqi boy who was burned and blinded in a single eye after stepping on a cluster bomb. Mr. Easley labored for greater than a 12 months to convey the boy to america for medical remedy.
He lined up a roster of eye surgeons and dermatologists to deal with the boy for gratis.
“Folks ask me why this boy, why assist him, when there are such a lot of others worse off,” Mr. Easley mentioned in an interview on the time. “I inform them, properly, I don’t know in regards to the different boys. However I do learn about Ayad.”