From the Pentagon saying it’s going to poll the families of military personnel about their thoughts on repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, to actually holding a forum to invite ostensibly straight soldiers’ feedback on a repeal, the military is making clear its strategy on repealing the discriminatory policy: let’s have everyone weigh in and see what they think and make this a democratic decision! The premise is certainly a bizarre one, since military leaders don’t have much of a history asking what subordinates — or their husbands and wives — think about their policy making.
“I truly wish I could have been there” writes the blogger Just-A-Joe, the gay soldier serving his second tour in Iraq, who we interviewed. “How is it that we can have a forum to discuss the implications of repealing a policy which affects a specific sector of the population and exclude that sector? I know for a fact that there were gay or lesbian service members in that auditorium, whom could not respond, honestly. It is quite offensive to be having these discussions. Imagine the United States Armed Forces if we had these types of discussions about all the issues we are faced. I guarantee you we would not still be in the middle east. My problem is not that the military is conducting a study, that is good. Being in the military, I understand that there is a lot of implications to the repeal of DADT. However, why is it that they need to survey straight troops about this switch? After all, Senate made it perfectly clear that this study was to be about how to implement, not if to implement repeal. What needs to be focused on is matters of personnel administration, allowances, benefits, and most importantly policy editing. Instead we are seeing the government put to use tax payers dollars to have a reaction panel on the issue.”
Did the Navy survey male soldiers when it decided to remove its ban on letting women serve on submarines? Were there focus groups assembled for white soldiers when integrating black troops was considered?
The people who are most affected by policy changes should be the ones given the most weight and consideration. Which is why gay and lesbian — not heterosexual, or those presumed to be — soldiers should be the ones able to speak to Pentagon officials about how DADT is harmful. This isn’t about making straight soldiers feel “comfortable.” It’s about letting gay soldiers serve as openly as anyone else while still maintaining the strict decorum of the military. Without the ability to speak up with immunity from a DADT dismissal, the entire investigation/research effort has been neutered and rendered considerably irrelevant.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
The letter sent last month to Air Force personnel:
Jason
Well, I guess if she is worried about her husband being buggered, then she should have a chance to say so…
Just-a-Joe
See that section about “our primary goal is to understand all the issues..”
Yet, they have openly discouraged us from taking part in any way. We must stay alert for our opportunity to be presented to voice our opinions through these amazing “third-party” researchers. God forbid the leaders have to actually talk to, ‘the gays’. They amaze me… Not sure what else to say, simply amazed.
Ioan
The straights always have to have their two cents’ worth. I am so tired of them having a say in our lives without us being consulted. Who gives a damn what some straight woman thinks about repealing DADT? It won’t be her life that is ruined when yet another serviceperson is kicked out for who and what he is, irrespective of how spotless his or her service to this country has been.
Every GLBT person in this country ought to feel insulted by this. I know I am.
t-bone
and will they ask the partners of gay soldiers also, cause otherwise they’re not really consulting all the families. They’d just be caring about the straight ones.
Jason
@Just-a-Joe: I was in Iraq like twice, like yourself. My comarades knew about me and it was no big deal. I sincerely hope that shit works out for you, brother…
terrwill
Absofreakinloutley Amazing……..Never before in the 234 years of the US having any type of Armed Forces did they seek input from anyone outside the servcies. Now when it comes to the Gays, they get all Oprahesque suddenly!………..Disgusting
Nosaj
Well, I guess if she is worried about her husband being buggered, then she must have a reason to suspect he’d allow it…
Bill
Why any gay American would serve a country that denies them freedoms they send them to war to fight for is simply beyond me.
DR
This disturbs me greatly. Straight family members get asked for their input on the policy, but there is no workable way to ensure that GLB soldiers have any input unless they want to risk discharge.
No one asked white wives (or soldiers) what they thought of racial integration.
No one asked wives what they thought about integrating female sailors into submarine crews.
No one asked anyone what they thought of integrating the military academies in 1976.
So why is it that military wives and families get a voice in this, but the soldiers it will impact the most, GLB ones, have no voice?
terrwill
@DR: “So why is it that military wives and families get a voice in this, but the soldiers it will impact the most, GLB ones, have no voice?”
Because that’s the best way to shoot it down, that’s why!
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@terrwill:
BRAVO!!!! The prize for using the fewest words to nail what’s really behind this goes to TERRWILL!
Many do great work in other ways, but our national groups royally fucked up by not uniting to DENOUNCE this phony study five minutes after phony repeal advocate Robert Gates announced it.
No more than DADT was really a “reasonable comprimise,” this is a CHARADE, a virtual filibuster to keep Congress from voting on repeal until the clock runs out with the November 2nd midterms and REPEAL WILL BE DEAD!
So, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE: stop with the whining about how the study is being done!!! It shouldn’t be done at all—DENOUNCE THE WHOLE GODDAMN THING!!! Ya really think they would give what gays say any credence, as if some might say, “No, I think DADT is a good thing. I WANT to continue living a lie!”? GROW UP!
The study can’t be “fixed” any more than DADT can be.
Get your eyes back on the prize: a freeze on ALL discharges followed by repeal as quickly as Congressional procedures can spit it out!
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NDP
So, with everything else, the military will say, “We’re not a democracy, we just defend one,” but with this, it’s suddenly a democracy? Please…
Bill Perdue
We should continue supporting repeal of Clinton’s vile DADT because it leads to harassment and violence against LGBT folks in the military.
But we should never buy into the pro-war, White House ploy of opposing DADT because it’s bad for ‘national security’. Support for the ‘national security’ interests of oil companies and the merchants of death is inexcusable. The Pentagon and the White House need cannon fodder.
Appeals to protect ‘our’ national security, and calls for enlistment are a betrayal of the lives of GIs and civilians murdered by the White House and the Pentagon under Clinton, both Bushes and Obama. Working people or the GLBT communities. We have zero interests in the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The only beneficiaries of these imperial wars are oil companies and merchants of death like Cheney’s Haliburton. The White House and the Pentagon are not in the business of ‘protecting’ us. Quite the opposite. Their oil piracies makes the world a very dangerous place for Americans.
Obama’s invasions and occupations to protect the ‘national security’ of Texaco and War, Inc. are a replay of Nixon’s doomed effort to win in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia failed. GIs are once again forming their own antiwar movement and facing down careerists and officers. In Vietnam that ended the fighting effectiveness of US forces and forced Nixon to withdraw them to prevent wider mutinies.
In this war the global civilian antiwar movement, for all its ups and downs, obstinately continues to grow. The tenacious struggle by Iraqi oil workers to prevent the theft of their oil by the US military brass will be the decisive factor in Iraq. Until then the Pentagons ‘national security’ propaganda will continue to kill and maim GI’s, drive them to mass suicide and murder civilians from Palestine to Pakistan. It’s also responsible for the fact that GLBT folks in Iraq being murdered in huge numbers by US trained and equipped jihadist sunni police and shiite militias.
Here’s what ‘National Security” means in the real world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?f…
And here
[img]http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:WUv7u2wP_JUzaM:http://open.salon.com/files/coffins1241048103.bmp%5B/img%5D
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
Oh, Mary, puhleeze! Give the lunatic fringe “The US Military Is Satan” hogshit a rest [I know you won’t but it’s my rhetorical duty to say it].
Say you’re in a foreign country. There’s suddenly a coup and all Americans are locked up and they take away your treasured moth-eaten books about Trotsky. Who ya gonna call….Ghostbusters?
Bill Perdue
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com: The Voice of the Pentagon.
If Mikey could read he’d know that I’m criticizing his beloved Democrats in the White House and the Pentagon, not GI’s. But he can’t read when it comes to the truth, so he foams at the mouth.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
You pathetic little thing. You’re like a gay teabagger.
Bill Perdue
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com: How does it feel mikey, knowing that your encouragement of enlistment and touching support for the wars of Texaco and Haliburton will kill more GI and civilians?
Never mind, an apologist for Obama’s war isn’t expected to have a conscience, and you certainly don’t. However do you sleep at night?
Karinne
@Bill Perdue:
What a fool. You don’t even really think about the positions you take. You just recite them, like a good fundamentalist.
“Support for the ‘national security’ interests of oil companies and the merchants of death is inexcusable.”
Gee, I thought the war in Iraq was fought in order for the US to get cheap oil. That would be contrary to the interests of the oil companies, who want oil prices sky high. If US policy was done for the benefit of Texaco, we would have left Saddam in place under sanctions, which artificially restricted oil supply and raised prices.
But don’t let a lack of facts or internal logic stop your preaching.
alan brickman
they should also be asked about blacks and jews in the military….probably the same answers….
Bill Perdue
@Karinne: That’s a good one.
A refreshing new name, never seen before.
But the same tired lies. The war is for control of oil, not cheap oil, stupid.
Your tender support for the oil companies and merchants of death like Cheney and Haliburton will never pay off. It marks you, just like support for Barney Franks gutted version of ENDA and his transphobia marked other log cabineers.
Got it. You support the wars. Teabaggers support the warsw. You’re not such strange bedfellows after all.
adman
These are the hard questions we should ask of Christians. If you want to serve openly, should we let you? I for one say no, it defeats the morale of everybody else. Sorry, you’re outta here…
dfrw
Asking personnel is ridiculous and simply provides a scapegoat for getting out of something that the DOD, Congress, and President Obama don’t really want to do (repeal DADT). “Well we asked everyone what they thought and they are against repealing it, so we’re not going to do it.”
This is the perfect time to repeal it because the Congressional majority is there to do it, nobody likes the Democrats anyway after health care, and because President Obama is….well President Obama.
Just Do It!
ksu499
You just know that Harry Truman called a focus group before he issued the order integrating the armed services.
Rob Moore
I knew as soon as I heard Obama speak about DADT that we were sunk. He is letting a homophobic organization, which we help to fund, assess DADT. It was just another one of his sops he throws out from time to time to keep us from bolting from the Democratic fold. He has never seriously considered acting on any of our major issues, and he never will.
For a very brief moment before he addressed the rather useless HRC dinner, I had a glimmer of hope that he was ready to act for us as well as Wall Street and the health insurance companies. I even dared to make a small donation to the Democrats. Once I read the transcript of his speech, I knew he simply wanted to keep our votes and money without doing anything for us. He is just another politician who says he wants to do things for us but will never do anything. I will no longer bother playing the game of voting for false allies. If there is no one to trust with my vote, I won’t vote.
jeffree
Gee, why don’t we ask members of the military if they want to bunk with Jews, African Americans, Moslems, Pagans, Athiests or Latinos?
When Blacks were integrated into the Armed Forces did the US ask caucasians how they “felt about it”?? Heck no. Did we poll spouses of military personnell if they would approve of women being admitted to the Citadel? No we did not.
Did we ask if it would be acceptable to let
people whose native language isn’t English to fight for our country? Nope.
Sorry, but the *Military Preparedness* of the US is NOT a ripe subject for a popularity poll. We are not choosing prom king or queen here.
The only measure should be the person’s ability to perform assigned tasks. If a medic –who happens to have parents from Lebanon or is Hindu or Gay– rescues me from the blast of a IED, then
the only thing i should care about is my life being saved……not their heritage, religion or attraction to Lady GaGa!!
Just-a-Joe
@Bill: For the same reasons all other soldiers do. Besides the outstanding GI Bill, I will tell you this. Being closeted and gay in the military, and living is Seattle… completely beats being open in the tiny ass town I grew up in BFMissouri. Any day.
Rob Moore
@jeffree: Well said.