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We've made a lot progress, but much is yet to be done.

“What's right is right”: Widowed lesbian pushes for equal military benefits
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

Photo courtesy Tracy Johnson
Donna Johnson, left, and Tracy Johnson at their home in Raeford, N.C., in 2012.

When her spouse was killed in Afghanistan, Tracy Johnson drove across town to her mother-in-law’s house — clutching her marriage certificate — so she could hear the Army’s formal notification. No one from the military came to her door.

She later watched as the American flag that cloaked the coffin of her spouse, Donna Johnson, was offered, not to her, but to Donna Johnson’s mother – the next of kin, as U.S. law stipulates. She was denied death benefits, she said, that are standard issue to heterosexual spouses of service members who die in action: free health care, tuition assistance, and monthly indemnity compensation of about $1,200.

And then there was the ring. On Valentine’s Day 2012, Tracy Johnson placed that band on her wife's finger during their marriage ceremony in Washington, D.C. Last October, as Johnson escorted her wife's body home from Dover Air Force Base, the Army asked Johnson to carry the wedding ring, designated as a “personal effect.” After arriving in Fayetteville, N.C., Johnson was obliged, by a federal statute, to deliver the ring to an Army officer who then provided it to Donna Johnson’s mother who, in turn, gave it back to Tracy Johnson. She wears it on her finger today.

“I’m not considered ‘family’ (by the military). I’m not considered a spouse and I’m damn sure not considered a widow, by definition,” said Johnson, an Army National Guard staff sergeant who served in Iraq. “We didn’t marry for any of those benefits. We married out of love.”

Rest of article HERE.