Mission Statement

1. To offer the best blogging service to LGBT Service Members.
2. To contribute to the repeal of 10 U.S.C. 654 by offering LGBT (”Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, & Transgender”) Service Members a forum in which they can anonymously make their voices heard by lawmakers.
3. To increase pressure on lawmakers to support passage of H.R. 1059 (the Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2005).
4. To make it politically difficult for the President to veto H.R. 1059 when it comes across his desk and to encourage him to sign it into law.

What is Serving in Unsilence™?

Serving in Unsilence offers free bloghosting for members of the U.S. Armed Forces who identify as being LGBT and need a safe place to talk about themselves and their experiences. We use state-of-the-art technology from WordPress and others to make it possible.

By signing up for — and using — a blog hosted by Serving in Unsilence, you are making a statement that you will no longer tolerate the status quo. You are making your voice heard, which we hope will be heard in Washington by Congress and the President.

What do I get?

When you register for a blog on Serving in Unsilence, you get a whole host of features which make blogging on our system so great:

Easy Registration
Registering for a blog is very simple. All you need to do is visit http://unsilence.com/wp-signup.php, fill in the form (and accept the Terms of Service), then check your email for your password and activation link.

Privacy Protections
You can choose your level of privacy for your blog. There are three levels:

• Completely open: access to the blog is not limited in any manner.
• Unlisted: the blog is not searched or indexed by search engines.
• Members only: the blog is accessible only to registered Unsilence™ members.

Navigation Made Easy
If you’ve ever used a Wordpress-based blog before, then you know that the Dashboard is not very well-designed. Our redesigned Dashboard makes finding all of your blog’s functions a snap (as well as aesthetically pleasing). Unfortunately, we’re not able to support web browsers based on Internet Explorer yet, so those users will have to use the default Dashboard (or switch to a standards-compliant browser).

Easy Blogging
Blogging couldn’t be made easier! Simply click on “Write” in your Dashboard, then you’re ready to go. We even offer a “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get) editor so you can see how your post will be formatted. You can even get a preview of your post before you publish it. If you need to make a quick edit without logging into your Dashboard, all you need to do is click the pencil icon that you’ll find to the right of the post’s title.

Spam Protection
We use the Akismet service from the people who wrote Wordpress. This service is extremely effective at catching spam comments with very few false positives. The only catch is that you need to get an activation key from Wordpress.com (instructions will be in your Dashboard).

Beautiful Themes
Unlike other blog hosts which offer more themes than you can throw a grenade at, we are more choosy. All of our themes have been chosen because they look great, and have been modified to support our features (e.g. editing posts without going into the Dashboard). If you’re not satisfied with the look of your chosen theme, you can edit it to suit your needs without affecting other users’ blogs. We’ve even got custom-made themes designed to show off the pride you have in your Service Branch. If none of our pre-installed themes satisfy your taste, then we can install the theme that you do want into your blog (either a downloadable, pre-made theme, or one you designed yourself) for a small fee.

Extras
What other people call “plugins,” we call Extras. These are additional features that you can activate with a single click which will enhance and extend the functionality of your blog. There is no charge for these pre-installed Extras. For a small fee, we will install additional Extras into your blog — just point us to the address where we can download them and we’ll do the work to give your blog the feature you want.

Personalized Blog Addresses
By default, your blog address will be http://your_login.unsilence.com. If you have a domain name that you’d like to use, we can point it at your blog for a small fee (email not included) so that you can use that instead of the default address. (Not yet available — still in the testing phase)

Sounds great. What do I need?

You need a relatively modern web browser (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer 7.x, Konqueror, Opera, et al). Different web browsers have different levels of support for web standards, but most should work just fine. Our site depends on javascript for some of its functions (such as registering!), so you need to ensure that javascript is enabled for unsilence.com in your web browser.

You also need the desire and will for blogging. Blogging can be addictive and very rewarding, but it’s easy to forget about it or to get frustrated with it.

You also need to make sure that you’re maintaining proper personal OPSEC procedures so that you don’t wind up being separated from the military because of your account here. We’re not going to sugarcoat this fact — you can lose your job if you’re currently in the military by being a member of Serving in Unsilence. You can experience anti-gay bias or harrassment because of your blog on our site.

With that said, keep in mind that the more Service Members who maintain active accounts here, the greater the chances of having Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed. If we have even only 1,000 active blogs on Serving in Unsilence, we’re still projecting 1,000 voices toward Congress and the President from a single location. Every little bit makes a difference.

I’m ready and prepared!

Then point your browser to our registration page and get a blog!