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One former Air Force officer who served 18 months in prison for consensual sodomy described a complicated, slow, and secretive process.
Despite a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” granted in June by President Joe Biden, only eight former military service members convicted of crimes related to their LGBTQ+ sexual identity or same-sex sodomy have applied for pardons. One of those who applied for a pardon after serving 18 months in a federal prison says the process has been slow, complicated, and narrow in scope.
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Steve Marose, now 58, was a gay Air Force officer in 1990 training at a since-closed base in Louisiana. He sometimes visited a gay bar in a nearby town or drove over 200 miles to New Orleans. At some point, he became ensnared in the investigation of another gay service member. He told the Seattle Times he first learned he was a suspect when he came home to find military investigators ransacking his apartment. Investigators eventually found his secret stash of gay porn magazines.
“They were going on a witch hunt,” Marose recalled for the Times. “And I remember the commander said, ‘If you don’t cooperate, there could be more charges for you.
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Threatened with up to 17 years in prison, he pleaded guilty to three counts of consensual sodomy and two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer in addition to three counts of consensual sodomy. Rather than a quick conviction and dishonorable discharge, the judge in the case gave him a stiff sentence of two years in prison, and Marose served 18 months behind bars, mostly at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
The experience follows Marose to this day. He says he has been denied employment because of the conviction and time served.
When Biden announced the pardons on June 26 during Pride Month this year. Marose was upbeat and grateful.
“I’m just glad the day has come,” Marose told the BBC in June.
Three months later, he was telling a very different story to The War Horse, which was investigating the pardon process.
“It sounds like it’s very broad, that thousands of people will be positively impacted,” Marose told War Horse in September. He said the process was much different “when you look under the hood,” however.
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Rather than granting a pardon to a specific person, Biden issued a mass pardon to a group of individuals convicted and discharged due to their LGBTQ+ sexual identity or consensual same-sex sodomy. That means the onus is on the service member to initiate the process and submit to another investigation to determine if they are eligible for the pardon.
Marose described a complicated process that starts with a 26-page application that includes intrusive questions about the applicant’s personal and financial well-being, family life, community activities, sobriety, substance abuse, work history, and asks for recommendations from non-blood relatives and an explanation of why the person is asking for a pardon.
“Oh my God. I may not even qualify for this,” Marose thought when he first read the report, War Horse reported.
The Department of Defense has promised a more efficient, timely, and transparent process and to proactively research records for eligible service members. However, it has so far denied a Freedom of Information Act request from War Horse on the pardon process.
