From
Soulforce’s Equality Ride: Colorado Christian University and United States Air Force Academy

The next morning we held a press conference at the North Gate of the United States Air Force base. Many community members attended and we clothed them in blue “end religious-based oppression” tee-shirts. Together we drove to the chapel on base and 10 people stood in a vigil line with tape over their mouths representing the 10,000 people whose voices have been silenced by their discharge since the 1993 inception of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” DADT is a government sanctioned discrimination and is based on the untruth that neither society nor soldiers are ready to see openly gay people in the military. A Gallup poll in 2003 showed that 79% of Americans were in support of gay/lesbian/bisexual people in the military. One of the riders held an oversized poster board check made out to the U.S Department of Defense for 364 million dollars which is the amount of money tax payers have spent to replace the 10,000 gay discharges since 1993, which includes 60 Arabic/Farsi translators and 300 medics which would be very helpful in Iraq right now.

Katie Higgins, equality rider, spoke, “Who wants to sign this check? I don’t want to sign this check, do you? My father and grandfather served in the military and this money had been used to insure that I cannot follow in their footsteps and serve my own country. Do you, Commandant, wish to sign this check? Or perhaps Pres. Bush would like to sign it? Are there any cadets here who would like to sign it? Why are you walking away from me, is it because you do not want to sign this check?” She was arrested along with 10 other riders and community members for attempting to speak out about the myths and facts concerning gays in the military.