Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Get me Fucking Started...

So DADT has been repealed. Praise be! it makes me want to give Dan Choi a great, big hug and a weekend at Disney. Seriously - everyone knows there are gays in the military. There always have been. A soldier is a soldier. Not something I'd choose to dedicate my life to, but thank God someone does. Who the hell cares how they identify? Gay people serve in armies all over the world, and morale among the troops seems just fine, thank you very much. The long and the short of it is -it's about fucking time.


Here's the thing, though: no one can afford to become complacent about LGBT rights. DADT was repealed. Few of us will be directly impacted by this. The fact is, this country is still a mess when it comes to gay rights, and this is exactly the kind of move government makes to appease the uppity. How long before queers are told to sit down and shut up about other forms of discrimination with, "You got DADT overturned...what the hell else do you want?" Even money says TPTB figure this bit of doing-the-right-thing comes with a proviso: we'll fix that little military thing, but they have to shut up about that same-sex marriage nonsense. 

Here is what you need to know about the decision re DADT:


You have a son who has always wanted to serve in the military. Your son is gay. Now that DADT is a thing of the past, you son can Be All That He Can Be. He can join the army, as himself. Private Gaylord Assboy reporting for duty, Sir! That's it. That's all the overturning of DADT means. 


Your gay son cannot marry the man he loves. If he has a life partner, the US Army does not recognize this. If your son marries a nice, young woman he met while stationed in Germany, this woman could apply for a Greencard and, eventually, U.S. citizenship as the wife of an American. And, if your son were suddenly stationed in Fort Middle-of-Nowhere, the US Army would almost certainly relocate his wife. They would be eligible for military housing. Your daughter-in-law would get an official I.D. card so that she could shop at the PX and the Commissary. If, heaven forbid, your son died in the line of duty, your daughter-in-law would be eligible for widow's benefits. 


But your son is queer. 


Thanks to the recent decision about DADT, your son is now good enough to die for his country as a proud and out gay man. He's not good enough, however, to be granted the same rights as those granted the soldier who stands next to him - the soldier who is heterosexual. There is no Greencard for your son's life partner. No military relocation. No military housing. No PX or Commissary. No survivor's benefits. There is nothing for your son's life partner. Because he's gay. He might as well not even exist.


Your gay son can be a war hero, but he can't be a husband.


This business with DADT is a victory, but it's a small one and, while I'm sure President Obama will be willing to take credit for it in 3....2...1...the fact is, DADT was overturned in spite of him, not because of him. So, before you go back to your comfortable chair and say, "I knew Obama would come through for me in the end," remind yourself that we still have a president who believes marriage is a sacred union between MEN AND WOMEN. The long and short of it is he is against full equality and recognition on a federal level. And, without full equality and recognition under the law, on a federal level, the fight for gay rights will go nowhere. They will toss us a bone, now and then, to keep us quiet, but we will be treading water. 


The American Civil War ended in 1865. Jim Crow laws, enacted locally, meant that, for millions of black Americans, the end of slavery did little to bring equality. Change only really started to happen when discrimination was addressed on a federal level, by the Supreme Court. This didn't start until the 20th century, and black people living in America are still far from having equal opportunities in this country.


Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell is nice....now tell me what else you have for me? 

Hate to say "I told you so"...

When I said it during the presidential elections - that I was not pro-Obama, because he was clearly not planning on doing anything to move gay rights along - his staunch supporters, in between bouts of gushing syrupy praise over their new Messiah, told me I was racist. After all, what reason other than the fact that Obama was black could I have for not LOVING him? I reminded them that, actually, Obama is of mixed race as, technically, so am I.

And then the elections were over and we had a new president. Hurrah! Even I was glad. Not because Obama was the living, breathing cure for AIDS that his blind fandom had painted him to be, but because he wasn't George W. Bush.

Time passed, and he did lots of things. Mostly good things. He even did a bunch of things he said he'd do if elected. He did nothing to promote same-sex marriage. Fair enough - that's exactly what he promised he'd do: NOTHING to support an idea he doesn't believe in. Even if he DID believe in it, once upon a time, not even that long ago. No surprises there; a politician changing his mind about an important issue in order to garner favor.

A couple of people I know, people who were staunch supporters of Obama...people who are gay, voiced their "disappointment" in him. How, I asked them, could they be disappointed in a man who had stated, in no uncertain terms, that marriage is for heterosexuals, only? How could they be angry and surprised that a man who would invite one of the nation's most vocal homophobes to deliver the inaugural invocation speech would end up to be less than a friend to his gay voters? How, I asked them, could they be so naive?

"He's doing a lot of good,"they'd answer, "He's still pretty amazing. Give him time. He just needs time. He'll come around. He's trying to bring people together."

How, I wondered, could smart people, people I liked and cared about and usually respected, have deluded themselves into believing that denying a whole sector of society our civil rights was a strategy for "bringing people together"? How did otherwise rational people convince themselves to still talk about their love for a president who did not even acknowledge as legitimate the love two people share for a lifetime, on account of their genders? How and why do smart people become stupid?

In October, I blogged about the hypocrisy of the whole "the world isn't ready...just wait" argument. I spoke about Del Martin, who died after 50 years of waiting for the world to be ready. Still, people I knew, people I liked, people I respected said to me, "But, the president is AWESOME. Just wait. you'll see. He's done a lot of good."

If we had a president who was denying women the vote, or blacks an education or Asians the right to work, I would not tolerate the stupid, naive, ignorant excuse-making of his supporters. Our president thinks its perfectly okay to let fags go to war -maybe even die defending this nation - as long as they keep their mouths shut about who they like to fuck. That is the long and short of it. This week's DOJ actions say it all. That's inexcusable. At worst, our president is a homophobe. At best he's a spineless coward.  Any gay person who defends Obama's lack of movement on the gay rights front can just call himself Uncle Tom: you're like a black person who thinks Rosa Parks was uppity and Dr. King had a big mouth. It feels dirty and obscene to even type those two examples, but they're the best and most accurate comparisons I can think of. If you're a gay person and you think other gays who refuse to support a president who continually denies us our civil rights are stirring up trouble or "don't understand what Obama is doing", you're a fucking idiot, and you should probably turn in your toaster.

And you know what? I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.