Dan Choi, the U.S. Army first lieutenant, all but assured himself a dismissal from the armed forces after going on Rachel Maddow‘s television program in March 2009 and violating the second phrase of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. So how come he’s back on active duty?
Because he hasn’t been discharged. And he may never be.
Choi was supposed to headline a workshop at Creating Change, this past weekend’s NGLTF activism conference, but he was a no-show. As his replacement explained, that’s because Choi was called back to service by the Army. Except: They wanted him back? Los Angeles-based photographer Jeff Sheng, who shot Choi for a photo series (and took this picture), spoke with the lieutenant to find out what the deal is. He relays: “Apparently, Lt. Choi’s commander has always been in full support of him, and even after Lt. Choi came out on The Rachel Maddow Show, his commander did not press for his discharge. The military did eventually serve Lt. Choi a discharge notification – essentially firing him from his job, but he was allowed to fight this at trial, and as it currently stands, the discharge has not been finalized. Given the current state of how DADT is in such flux, and also, in my opinion, the prominence and celebrity of Lt. Choi, his discharge might never be fully enforced.”
Well! This is, without question, a significant development in the DADT battle. Choi is arguably the most public face of the policy, and his name is well known to Pentagon officials and White House advisers; even President Obama would recognize his face. And that there’s been no top-down effort to keep him from serving — no “let’s wait and see” approach from publicity-minded military leaders above Choi’s commander — is indeed a nod toward Obama’s push to repeal the law.
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So while Sec. Gates and Adm. Mullen promise a not-so-expeditious review of DADT, in the meantime the policy’s most famous face — derided by institutional activists — is back on duty, working to keep America and its allies safe. Be well, Choi. We have hope yet.
UPDATE 2/10: Choi clarifies in a statement: “I was never fully discharged and have been substituting drills because of my schedule of lobbying and pushing for repeal. I attended national guard duty this past weekend beacuse we needed to train on critical skills for a possible upcoming deployment. My discharge is still pending, but I have returned to work – and there are no instances of decreased good order or discipline. I sleep in an open bay with little privacy. No issues. Good to be back with my unit! – although I can still be fired at any moment for DADT.”
Brad
I salute you, Lt. Choi.
Brian NJ
Thank God for brave Americans like Choi. His commander is also a hero.
Peter
Boob—-your name fits you well. (This is an important article.)
DR
Well, now, an interesting development to say the least…
Same Crap
Wow. A Queerty post without any misdirected snark or Obama bashing. New editors?
romeo
An interesting development. I wonder how other soldiers in a similar position are being treated, or if this is just a fluke because Lt. Choi has a supportive commander and is so high profile?
BUSSY
Good For Him..DADT is silly anyways
Bil Browning
Correction: Jeff Sheng didn’t take the photos. Dan sent them to Bilerico Project. Jeff’s photos are not of Choi; they’re of ordinary LGBT active duty soldiers in intimate settings while hiding their identities.
fredo777
This is fantastic news.
Michael W.
Obama has done more to advance gay rights in one year than Bill Clinton did in eight.
Same Crap
@Michael W.: Of course. Obama gets grief, often deserved, for inaction–but muted reactions and faint, backhanded “praise” for any action or movement.
That’s just the way the ball bounces.
PADude
@Michael W.: True. Very true.
Some of that’s the fact that we’re hitting the limit in the community. We’ve had it with second-class citizenship, so not all of that bile is entirely justified.
That having been said, we still have a President who thinks we deserve second-class citizenship with respect to marriage. That would have flown in the Clinton era, but not in the Obama era.
edgyguy1426
I may be skeptical; but maybe they did it to shut him up.
1EqualityUSA
Maybe they did it because they need him.
RomanHans
Sigh. I really like you Queerty guys, but this story is a mess, and your readers shouldn’t have to go to another website to read the truth.
“The military did eventually serve Lt. Choi a discharge notification – essentially firing him from his job, but he was allowed to fight this at trial, and as it currently stands, the discharge has not been finalized.”
Contrary to what you infer, nothing has changed. Lt. Choi is fighting his discharge, so they’re leaving him where he was until that’s decided.
schlukitz
Maybe they did it because it’s the right thing to do?
Brett
Putting him back on duty is not a nod of support for gay soldiers. It’s the simplest, most effective way to keep him out of sight until his discharge is completed.
mike
If I were Dan Choi, I wouldn’t go back until they completely got rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Lakas
Wow! That’s a big one! But does he use it well?
QueerToday
Remember when the gay liberation movement used to be against war and militarism? Why are we celebrating the inclusion of queers in the military to this degree? Sure, no one should be fired for being queer. But we also have to remember that war and occupation hurt queer families worldwide, and that the military preys on our poorest of young citizens putting them on the frontlines to die.
Bill Perdue
No. 20 · QueerToday
Good question.
The war for oil crowd, led by Obama and cheered on by Congress are considering their options. They’re way out of their league in their attempt to win permanent imperial hegemony over South Asia’s oil. They simply don’t have the resources to continue the wars against Palestine and Pakistan and the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Further, in spite of the loud-mouthed bullying by Obama and H. Clinton they don’t really have the wherewithal to attack Iran.
The central question they face is how to get those resources? Obama has committed to long drawn out and costly occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan, where his escalation has stirred up a hornets’ nest and led to the rapid growth of the Taliban, who, in spite of Karzai’s pathetic pleas show no sign of ending their insurrection against his US controlled puppet government. Likewise in Iraq the insurrectionists and the powerful, anti-American, militant oil workers union show no signs of giving up the ghost.
To get the necessary cannon fodder they may have to reinstitute the draft because enlistments are down, way, way down. For a while Bush relied on stop-loss and recruiting criminals and veterans of formations like the neo-Nazi Guatemalan Special Forces and other military murder groups. But even those sources are drying up. The Pentagon, to say nothing of Obama and the Congressional Democrats are terrified of reintroducing the draft.
Now it seems that some of the brainless idiots in the Pentagon and the White House want to give repeal of Clintons bigoted DADT a try. And it’s clear that they don’t give a damn about the real reasons we want Clinton’s legacy of bigotry repealed – the violence against GLBT servicemembers, their loss of benefits, kangaroo courts martial and the psychological violence of forcing people to deny their sexual preference.
The one and only thing on Obama’s mind is a fresh source of meat for the grinder. In their desperation for cannon fodder he and the Pentagon imagine that out of the blue huge numbers of working class GLBT folks are just itching to run off to the oil wars, get killed, wounded, maimed and return home suicide prone and suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, all to the applause of a grateful oil industry and a few pro-enlistment apologists for the war.
Fat chance. Except for a few careerists, lifers and pro-war reactionaries LGBT folks are no more likely to enlist than the rest of the working class population. Maybe Obama ought to begin negotiations with his reactionary peer French President Nicolas Sarkozy to find out what it would cost to lease the French Foreign Legion for a few decades.
To date deaths in Iraq as a result of the Clinton-Bush-Obama invasion and occupation of Iraq are 4375 and 31,616 wounded, roughly half too seriously to be returned to duty. If you add in soldiers form US puppet states the total is 4693. Similar figures for The Bush-Obama invasion and occupation of Afghanistan are 986 Americans, and the total including those from puppet states is 1,631. 9496 Americans have been wounded. Causality and death figures have nearly doubled since Obama took office (from icasaulities.org ) Suicide figures for returning vets and active duty personnel number in the thousands and are rapidly escalating.
[img]http://www.deviantart.com/download/82591661/Iraq_Veterans_Against_the_War_by_Latuff2.jpg[/img]
christopher di spirito
Dan Choi was never kicked out of the military under DADT.
His case is still winding its way through the court. Choi, who is a decent guy, was reinstated to active duty. But, he could be kicked out at any moment.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2010/02/09/dan-choi-can-t-be-reinstated-to-the-army-because-he-was-never-kicked-out-but-his-return-to-drill-is-still-kind-of-a-big-deal.aspx
Brady Hargrove
To Bill Perdue: Well spoken. You must be a former military man because you are right on target. Our plutocractic fascist government doesn’t care a whit about GLBTs. If the Pentagon removes DADT, it will be for reasons entirely their own; reasons that have nothing to do with living up to our parroted pious platitudes about Democracy and Justice. Having said that, I support all of our Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual military personnel, and especially guys like Dt. Dan Choi, who are working to see this policy changed for the right reasons.
Bill Perdue
@Brady Hargrove: I’m a proud veteran of the antiwar movement.
We do have a plutocratic goverment run by and for the looter class. If they suffer a loss in the market all they have to do is to lobby Obama, their lapdog, and he issues checks for up to a trillion at a time. That’s more than enough to write 150 million dollar bonus checks for lots of deserving execs (lobby = offer money).
That’s not fascism. It’s just proof that absolute power creates absolute venality and contempt for working people. Attempts to create a fascist system involve attempts to crush – in a military sense – unions and other oppositonal groups. That hasn’t happened in the US and before it does lots of people will reach revolutionary conclusions and challenge the looter class for state power.
When that happens sooner or later the looter class will unleash their repressive rats on us. We just have to make sure we stockpile lots of the political equivalents of warfarin and brodifacoum.