U.S. Army General Mark Milley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (Photo Credit: U.S. Department of Defense)
NORMANDY, France | U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s Oren Liebermann during an interview on June 5 that last week’s cancellation of a drag show at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada was “the absolute right thing to do.”
The top U.S. military officer said the decision came from U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, but added that he agreed with the move.
A Pentagon source familiar with the matter told the Washington Blade on Thursday that Milley informed Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. that it is not Pentagon policy to fund drag shows on bases and the show needed to be canceled or moved off base.
He echoed those comments during Monday’s interview, asserting that the performances “were never part of [Department of Defense] policy to begin with, and they’re certainly not funded by federal funds.”
“DoD resources should be used for mission-essential operations, not diverted toward initiatives that create cultural fissures within our service ranks,” anti-LGBTQ+ U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said in a May 23 letter to Milley and Austin.
“I find it completely unacceptable that DoD is using taxpayer dollars to fund DEI programs that are divisive in nature,” said Gaetz, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion – programs typically administered by corporations that have increasingly become targets of conservative outrage.
Milley pushed back on accusations that the military had “gone woke” during the interview, which took place in Normandy, France, marking the 79th anniversary of the D-Day invasion into Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.
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