Lieutenant Dan Choi, the openly gay West Point graduate who has become the "poster soldier" for the movement to include gays in the military, will be one of the Grand Marshals at the Gay Pride March on Sunday. Choi, an Arabic translator who spent 15 months in Iraq before coming out in a nationally televised interview, tells NY1, "How disgusting to think that 60 years from now they're going to look back on this time in 2010 and say you weren't able to serve in your country's military because you are an American who happens to be gay? We're going to be so ashamed."
He added, "The moment that I wore my uniform, fighting for this country, I swore to uphold what this country means. It means liberty and justice for all, for all of us. And we cannot leave out any single member, any single part of this society." Choi will share the marshaling duties with Judy Shepard (mother of Matthew Shepard) and Constance McMillen, a Mississippi high school student prohibited from taking her girlfriend to the prom.
