The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
By Mayor Phil Kramer.
Recently the Franklin Reporter & Advocate published a Letter to the Editor by Beverly Lawson. It stated it was a shame that the Township Council did not pass a proclamation recognizing June as Veterans’ Month. She accused us of playing politics. I was going to let it pass until a friend of mine emailed me saying we made a mistake by not honoring veterans.
Spoiler alert, the first issue is there is no designated Veterans’ Month, secondly, veterans are celebrated in November with Veterans Day. We have a ceremony celebrating it. It happens to be organized by the former Republican Chairman and run by a Republican committee member in a manner devoid of politics. The third issue is much more sinister.
I will now attempt to prove there is no Veterans’ Month but it is much more difficult to prove a negative than a positive. For instance, you can easily prove there is a mouse in the house by finding evidence of a mouse. To prove there is no mouse you must at least search every nook and cranny of every room of the house. So please excuse the length of this letter.
The first clue was, I don’t remember ever hearing about Veterans’ Month. But I could have missed it. The next point of investigation is to google “is June veterans month”. The AI answer is No. But below that is the more sinister issue. The first link after the AI summary was a Facebook page that says, “Tomorrow is the start of June. It’s Veterans Month going forward instead of Pride Month. Spread the word!”
But how do I prove there is no June Veterans’ Month. I can’t search every nook and cranny of the web. I can however look at fact checker sites. On Snopes.com(1) a well-known facts checker, we see efforts began in May of this year to abolish Pride Month in June and replace it with Veterans’ Month. It also gave the fascinating history of how Pride month began. Bill Clinton in 1999 recognized June as Gay and Lesbian Pride month. The cause was taken up by Obama and Biden. A worthwhile read, but I digress.
Politifact.com fact checks if Trump suggested, “replacing pride month with veterans month in honor of those who served.”(2) He did not. But these sources may be biased. So I need to dig deeper. Wikipedia’s list of month-long observations for June lists 11 recipients including Pride month but no Veterans’ Month.(3)
Still Wiki isn’t always right so I looked at some military oriented sites. VFW.org on this June 2nd (Pride Month) recognized the contribution of LGBT+ veterans but never mentions Veterans’ Month.(4)
Military.com has an article on Military Appreciation Month in May of 2025 but makes no mention of Veterans Month.(5) More so if you scroll down the right column, you’ll find a section called “Military Holidays”. It does not include Veterans’ Month.
Okay, enough of this. Everything else I searched would be only government sites. Either .gov or .mil. The Joint Chiefs website, jcs.mil surely most have a mention of the month but a search for ‘veterans month june’ did not bring up any reference to the commemoration.(6) A google search of sites ending with .mil, ‘june veterans month site:.mil’, brought me to an Army Reserves web page which spoke of Veterans and Military Family Appreciation Month which is in November.(7) It was introduced by Trump and continued by Biden. But no Veterans’ Month in June.
A google search of the VA website provided a link that I clicked on and it produced a PAGE NOT FOUND error. By use of “the Wayback Machine” (archive.org) I found a copy of the page titled “VA celebrates Pride Month with events hosted by many VA facilities.” from June 7th, 2023. No mention of June also being Veterans’ Month. (8) Apparently, the page was expunged.
Since it would take Congress or the President to declare a national month I searched the Congressional Record(9). Nothing. The Federal Registry (10) for Presidential proclamations found the National Veterans and Military Families Month started in 2017 with Trump and has been renewed every year since including under Biden. A search for the phrase ‘veterans month’ finds 0 documents.
As a veteran myself, the truly sad thing is that veterans are being used as a political tool to fool people and harm the LGBT+ community. I’m not accusing Ms. Lawson of that. I assume she is a victim, fooled by others.
I was unable to find a credible reference for Veterans’ Month. If someone can find a Presidential or Congressional order on a credible website, I will retract and apologize here and at the next Council meeting. In the meantime, this whole exercise is a reminder of why is it so important to recognize June as Pride month, because the struggle of LGBT+ equality is still relevant today even as dark forces are looking to erase any acknowledgements of the tremendous contributions of the incredible LGBT+ community.
Next June let us all unite to include in our Pride celebrations the contributions of our LGBT+ veterans, first responders, teachers, nurses and the like. Franklin, please don’t let this divide us.
1 https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/01/june-pride-month/
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_month-long_observances?utm_source=chatgpt.com
5 https://www.military.com/military-appreciation-month
7 https://www.usar.army.mil/news/images/igphoto/2003577555/
10 https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/proclamations/donald-trump/2025
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