It’s not a post-DADT world yet, but it will be after September 20 — and now Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) has prepared a comprehensive new legal guide to laws and policies related to U.S. military service as an LGBT servicemember once Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is finally gone.

Freedom to Serve: The Definitive Guide to LGBT Military Service is the first guide of its kind.  It also serves as the core content for SLDN’s newly designed website, which aims to provide LGBT service members, veterans, and their families with the legal tools and other information they need to navigate the post-DADT military environment.

SLDN Legal Director David McKean, author of the guide, writes:

The information contained in this legal guide will help service members, prospective service members, their families, and friends make informed decisions about how to serve successfully as we move beyond ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ It will also assist them in understanding how to protect themselves when necessary and how to respond if they are targeted in any way for their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

Read SLDN’s full press release.  See also SLDN’s online Guide to LGBT Military Service, which includes excerpts from the guide as published. SLDN has graciously given permission for Bent Alaska to post a copy of the full guide in PDF format on our own blog. We’ve added bookmarks to make it easily navigable.

Download Freedom to Serve: The Definitive
Guide to LGBT Military Service

The guide covers a full array of issues of important to LGBT servicemembers, veterans, and their families, including:

• What the repeal of DADT changes, and what it does not change
• Tips for serving, whether you choose to serve openly or not — standards of conduct, addressing harassment or discrimination, privacy and cohabitation, political activity, social media, HIV/AIDs regulations, veterans Administration benefits, and more
• The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)
• Benefits and family programs
• Servicemembers discharged under DADT or prior polices
• Additional resources

Importantly, the guide notes,

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal does not change the medical regulatory ban in place for aspiring or current service members who identify as transgender.

Hence, a chapter of the guide is devoted to service as a transgender person, including tips for serving in the closet.  The guide is also rife with examples of other ways in which LGB, as well as T, servicemembers even in a post-DADT world will continue to be treated as less then equal to their non-LGBT counterparts.  For example, military personnel in same-sex marriages will still not receive many benefits of marriage or military service that heterosexually married military personnel receive because of DOMA and some military regulations.

SLDN cautions users that its guide is “effective upon repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on Tuesday, September 20, 2011. Until then, service members are cautioned about coming out publicly.” For more information on SLDN’s warning to service members, visit its Legal Issues page.

Why September 20?

September 20 marks 60 days after the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was formally certified by President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  We wrote last week about DADT repeal certification (see also that post’s video of Sen. Mark Begich’s remarks about DADT at Anchorage’s Pride festival on June 25).

Here’s the official White House photo of Pres. Obama signing the certification of DADT repeal last Friday:

President Barack Obama signs the certification stating that the statutory requirements for repeal of DADT (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) have been met, in the Oval Office, July 22, 2011. Pictured, from left, are: Brian Bond, Deputy Director of Public Liaison; Kathleen Hartnett, Associate Counsel to the President; Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta; Kathryn Ruemmler, Counsel to the President; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen; and Vice President Joe Biden. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)