Gay Camp Pendleton Sailor Found Dead in Suspected Homicide

Blub:

A person was being held in connection with the suspected homicide of a 29-year-old sailor who was found in a Camp Pendleton guard shack, Navy officials said yesterday.

The body of Seaman August Provost of Houston was discovered about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday on the western edge of the base, said Doug Sayers, a spokesman for Navy Region Southwest. An autopsy was completed yesterday, but authorities were waiting for results of toxicology tests to determine the cause of death. A "person of interest" was being held in the brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. No charges have been filed.

The death has local gay activists calling for an investigation into whether Provost was slain because of his sexual orientation. "We're definitely monitoring this, and trust and hope the military will investigate this in the professional way it should," said Nicole Murray-Ramirez, chairman of San Diego's Human Rights Commission.

…Provost's partner, Kaether Cordero, said Provost was openly gay but kept his private life quiet for the most part. "People who he was friends with, I knew that they knew," Cordero said from Houston. "He didn't care that they knew. He trusted them."

Provost had recently complained to family members about a person who was harassing him, so they advised him to tell his supervisor, said his sister, Akalia Provost of Houston.

What breaks my heart even beyond the loss of Provost's life is that, if it turns out that he was killed because he was gay, there will be people who cite his death as justification to retain the DADT policy.

The reality, of course, is that the forced association between being gay and secrecy, shame, and silence, the suggestion that being gay is something so bad that it should and must be hidden, created by DADT is precisely what feeds the dangerous homophobia that leads to the mistrust and harassment and harm of gay soldiers. If anything, Provost's death, if indeed a hate crime, argues for DADT's repeal, cries plaintively for a policy that does not tacitly encourage suspicion, contempt, violent hatred of the Other.

RIP Seaman August Provost.