Soldier Darren Manzella broke new ground by coming out on 60 Minutes. While one would expect some repurcussions for such a public rejection of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Manzella says he’s been greeted by official – and welcome – silence. What’s more: he’s learned he’s not alone:
“I thought I would at least be asked about the segment or approached and told I shouldn’t speak to the media again,” says Manzella, 30, a medic who recently returned from Kuwait and plans to hold a news conference today in Washington to discuss the military’s silence.
He says he is among a growing number of servicemembers who have told other troops and even commanders they are gay and have not been discharged.
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Manzella says he was invited to join more than 600 members of an invitation-only MySpace group, Guys and Gals Like Us, for gays who don’t hide their orientation from their units. The members use pseudonyms because some gay servicemembers have been discharged for acknowledging their sexual orientation elsewhere online.
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“A lot of servicemembers are getting ‘wink-wink’ treatment from their commanders,” says Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara…
While the military establishment keeps mum, rabble-rousing Elaine Donnelly from the Center for Military Readiness wants military injustice: “[Manzella’s] commanders should be disciplined appropriately for failing to do their duty.” Said commanders have yet to return Donnelly’s call.
ee.em.bee
Hm, this is interesting. On the one hand, DADT could be just withering away under the weight of its own stupidness. On the other, though, it’s dangerous to assume that’s the case, since DADT is still on the books and could be used against a servicemember at any time. So I don’t quite know whether to cheer about this state of affairs, or strangely wish the military would go ahead and continue enforcing the rule so that, exposed as a farce, it could be formally eliminated. It could be much harder, in the long run, to achieve formal elimination of a rule that is simply not formally enforced–harder to fire up the opposition. Not that I wish bad things to befall our gay and lesbian servicepeople, but this is a tricky question that makes “the goal” kinda blurry.
hells kitchen guy
He is a hero and a good person who deserves praise for bravery on the field and off.
ee.em.bee
That too, hkg!
David Hauslaib, Queerty
Let’s be clear: His NOT being dismissed is not a sudden about-face by the Bush administration’s military policy; after pushing their constitutional amendment, I’m hard pressed to believe they fear any fallout for anti-gay decisions.
He remains enlisted because they can’t afford to lose a single soldier. Which almost makes the Army’s decision to keep him around worse.
gay as life
This is only bad news. It basically means that the military will discharge gays unless they need more bodies to feed to the war machine. Once the gay soldiers need a benefit of some kind, like a pension, they will be kicked out straight away.
ProfessorVP
I’d praise any serviceman, straight or gay, who makes America safer or kicks bin Laden’s ass. That has nothing to do with serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Kuwait. Manzella, sucking it in and staring into the camera lens, per usual, says it all.