State Rep. Larry McKeon has raised new questions about
the way in which Marty Dwyer was fired from his full-time job with the
Illinois Air National Guard. Dwyer’s employment was terminated in
February after officials confirmed that the staff sergeant with the 183rd
Fighter Wing had a profile posted on a Web site called Gay.com [Dusty
Rhodes, “Hard way out,” April 13]. Although many media outlets
have focused on whether Dwyer’s termination violated the
military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy,
the Chicago Democrat says that it may have also violated Illinois’
Human Rights Act, which was amended just last year to include a protection
from discrimination based on sexual orientation. “Not only was he discharged under questionable
circumstances, with possibly the lack of due process,” McKeon says,
“but also he was fired from his state job with the Illinois
Department of Military Affairs.”
McKeon acknowledges that Dwyer’s full-time job
was contingent on his enlistment status but says that Dwyer should have
been transferred to another state job rather than fired. He compares
Dwyer’s loss of military status to the situation of a hypothetical
state employee who suffers an injury that renders the worker unable to
perform his or her job. “That state would do everything to find that
person another [state] job,” McKeon says. But Cheryle Jackson, communications director for Gov.
Rod Blagojevich, disagrees, saying that Dwyer’s position was
federally funded and therefore not a state job. “Mr. Dwyer was a
full-time Air National Guardsman,” she says. “The job he had
was with the National Guard and not the state.”
Dwyer agrees that his salary may have been paid with
federal funds, but he insists that he worked for the state of Illinois. “My commander in chief was Rod
Blagojevich,” Dwyer says. “What the governor’s office is
trying to do is pass the buck.”
But that issue isn’t the only question regarding
Dwyer’s discharge. McKeon has higher hopes that the attorney
general’s office will rule that military officials violated
Dwyer’s privacy rights when an investigator used computers in
Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office to determine whether Dwyer had
a profile posted. “I did a preliminary investigation and asked the
attorney general to look into . . . the use of her office’s resources
in a case that would not have been a violation of state law,” he
says. The case against Dwyer began when a gay civilian filed
a complaint alleging that Dwyer had made a criminal threat against him. The
man also reported that Dwyer had a profile listed on a gay Web site. But
access to many Web sites is blocked on computers at Air National Guard
headquarters, Dwyer says. Documents obtained by Dwyer’s military
attorney show that ANG officials instead asked a Guard member who happened
to be employed in the attorney general’s office to search Gay.com for
a profile of Dwyer.
This article appears in May 18-24, 2006.
