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Retired Colonel Offers Cemetery Plot to Lesbian Navy Vet Denied Right to Burial with Her Partner
Idaho's Barry Johnson has us reaching for the tissues with his incredibly sweet offer.
Remember when we told you about U.S. Navy vet Madelynn Taylor last week? The 74-year-old woman was deprived her right to be buried with her late wife's ashes by the Division of Veterans Services. The Veterans Cemetery is state-run, and Idaho doesn't acknowledge same-sex unions, so Taylor braced for a fight for her equal rights.
"I'm not surprised," she told KBOI in Idaho last week. "I've been discriminated against for 70 years, and they might as well discriminate against me in death as well as life."
But we've got a heartwarming silver lining for you. Retired Colonel Barry Johnson, a fellow veteran in Idaho, wrote an op-ed in the Idaho Statesman offering up his own plot to Taylor and her spouse!
"I am happy to give my fellow veteran that small peace of mind," he said. "And I do it to honor all the great Americans I've served with along the way - gay, straight, whatever."
Johnson calls Taylor "one heck of a lady" and says that he wants to make it possible to have her partner by her side in the afterlife.
Johnson admits in the op-ed that he doesn't know if it's possible, but says that he's serious about doing so if he can.
"As a lifelong Idahoan and a 27-year Army veteran of two wars, I've worked beside heterosexuals, gays, lesbians and bisexuals. I've really never wanted to hear about anybody's sex life or sexual preferences, one way or another," he writes. "Give Madelynn and Jean and others like them a break. Stop finding reasons to make life - and in this case, death - harder than it needs to be."
We salute you, Colonel.
