STEPHEN FUNK IS being court-martialed, and we should all be angry about it.

Funk is the 20-year-old, openly gay, half-Filipino U.S. Marine reservist who went AWOL (absent without leave) rather than be sent to Iraq to kill. He later turned himself in and asked for conscientious objector status. The military then relocated the Seattle native, who was living here in the Bay Area at the time he went AWOL, to New Orleans, where he will be tried Aug. 11 for "desertion with intent to shirk important duty," according to Aimee Allison, a Gulf War C.O. who is a counselor to Funk. Allison says Funk could get up to one year in jail if he is found guilty. The military has chosen not to deal at all with Funk's application for C.O. status or his admission that he is queer.

Conscientious objectors are nothing new. The Center on Conscience and War in Washington, D.C., which provides counseling to conscientious objectors, says that during the first Gulf War there were 111 military people granted C.O. status (before the military stopped processing applications). There were 200,000 objectors during the Vietnam War, 4,300 during the Korean War, 37,000 during World War II, and 3,500 during World War I. Allison is not sure how many C.O. applications have been filed during the Iraq War, because that information is not yet available.

While a lot has been said in the mainstream media about supporting our troops in Iraq, no one mentions C.O.s like Funk, who get little public sympathy or attention except from the antiwar movement. As far as I'm concerned, they are humanity's true heroes. One day, when war is relegated to the Museum of Barbaric Human Practices, conscientious objectors will be looked upon as the few brave individuals who refused to take part in a madness that has gone on for far too long. Imagine how quickly war would become obsolete if every person of faith or conscience around the planet said, "No, this goes against my conscience; I will not cooperate with it; I will not pay war taxes; I will not send my children off to be slaughtered."

Considering the mass mobilizations against the war in Iraq (more than 30 million protesters worldwide Feb. 15 and 16 alone), the opposition of citizens around the globe may bring an end to armed conflict one day. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. I certainly never expected that in my lifetime the Berlin Wall would come tumbling down or the Supreme Court would uphold my right to have sex with another man.

Critics of Funk say he shouldn't have gone into the Marine Reserves if he didn't want to kill. Ignoring the facts that the military runs misleading recruitment campaigns showing only the "glamour" of being a soldier and that Hollywood routinely glorifies military life, making it impossible for anyone to grow up with a realistic picture of war, the fact is that an individual always has the right to say, "I cannot kill," and ask for C.O. status. Killing is the most vile act humans commit. Killing is permanent. You can't turn around a week later and say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to kill that civilian. Bring him or her back."

Funk went into the military and then realized exactly what he was going to have to do. He talked to chaplains who told him to just shut up and do his duty. That didn't stop his conscience from acting up. He did what he had to do in order to live with himself: He refused to kill. He did the right thing.