 On January 16, 2005, Rogers received an award from the organization for his service at a ceremony held at Dupont Grill.Rogers also attended events supporting the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which works to end the DADT policy.Rogers expressed his opinion on the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy in his Master's thesis, written in 2005 shortly before he was deployed to Iraq and reportedly killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) while on foot patrol