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Openly Gay National Guard Member Running For Office in Colorado | justout.com

by Ryan Prado

The positive effects of the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell have been rolling in since the official repeal date of September 20. Add the story of Brian Carroll to the collection.

Carroll is running for the newly drawn House District 28 in Colorado, and believes he is the first active National Guardsman in the country to run for office post-DADT.

“Ultimately, what this comes down to, I believe, is standing up and providing an opportunity for leadership,” said Carroll in an interview with HuffPo. “Really, the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ provides that opportunity — not only for myself, but for so many other openly gay members of the military. This really is a historic moment, and I think the people are going to look back at this, and say, ‘This is history in the making. This is when the entire ballgame changed.’”

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Carroll served two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq with Army Special Forces Information Management Division, Special Operations Command and was openly gay in defiance of DADT. While abroad, Carroll specialized in building infrastructure and information technology resources in remote area.

While Carroll appears to be the first openly gay active-duty service member to run since DADT’s repeal, other gay veterans have run in the past. As Chris Geidner at MetroWeekly noted, in 1999, Steve May, then a GOP lawmaker in the Arizona state legislature and a member of the Army Reserve, came out in a floor speech in the house. The Army began discharge proceedings against him, but it eventually dropped the case and reached a settlement.

Carroll expects to face incumbent state Rep. Andy Kerr (D) in the primary, and state Rep. Ken Summers (R) on the GOP side if he makes it to the general election.