Segregating the gays from the straights

A friend of mine asked me this today on facebook regarding the recent decisions about Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT).

What is your take on the talk about the whole "thorny issues" coming up since the DADT....like talk of segregating gays from straights in bunks/showers??? WTF? This is going to get way worse before it gets better. How do we stop this?

I quickly shot off an answer:

Wow, deep question. I think it's healthy to have "talks" about how to handle those issues. I try to think about what it would be like if I were straight. I mean, it is one thing to accept, respect and promote equality. It's a whole other thing when you're naked in the showers with one another. Most guys don't want other guys seeing their 'junk' gay or not. I can agree with showers having partitions between the shower heads that only makes sense, even now. But sleeping quarters? not needed. You don't sleep naked or anything.

 The truth is, before I was asked, I really hadn't given it much thought. I always assume that people are going to argue their point, express what they believe and so on. Why not? This is America, this is what our soldiers fight for, right?

So, do these discussions really matter?

Of course they do. It's a given that a lot of dumb things will be said here and there out of ignorance, fear or political agenda. We need to hear it. We need to know what they are saying and thinking so that we can fully arm ourselves against these sorts of blanket allegations.

Yes, they are slandering our community. They are making it sound like all that we do is look at the straight ones in the shower and maybe we'd rape them and all of that craziness. Because, as we all know, there aren't any gay folks in the military right now!

Do we need to shut these people up? No, not really. Not at all. Engage them in conversation, explain things on their level.

Here's my take on the whole thing.

How can you segregate gays in a way that makes sense? The reason, presumably, that men and women are segregated in the military is that they don't want to put people in the same area as potential 'mates'. So, if we put only gays with one another and only lesbians with one another what then do you think is supposed to happen? Now, as a man, I would be in a whole barracks full of other gay men. These would be, for the sake of this argument, my potential mates.

I haven't even yet skirted on what is the true heart of the matter. When I was in the Army, my unit and I formed a bond. We worked together daily as a unit, as a family. Our bond was like a sibling-hood.

I remember once having a friend in the unit (married straight guy) approach me wanting some 'friend sex'. I don't know, the whole thing really irked me a bit. I mean, he was handsome and a really nice guy, certainly someone under other circumstances I might have considered dating. But then and there? He was like family to me. To have allowed it to escalate to anything beyond our unit bond would have been deplorable on my part.

So the question is, what will happen when gays are allowed to serve in the military? The answer is simple, everything will remain the same except that our LGBT folks who are serving now will not be kicked out simply because of who they love.

If it will make you feel safe, by all means, put up partitions in the showers (that should have been done a long time ago anyway) but there's really no need at all to segregate us into different barracks. That makes as much sense as saying that a brother and a sister shouldn't live in the same house together.

Well, that's my two cents on the matter, love it or leave it.

Until next time, I'm OUT!

Joe Solmonese - HRC

In the news:

"We are on the brink of historic action to both strengthen our military and respect the service of lesbian and gay troops,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Today’s announcement paves the path to fulfill the President’s call to end ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ this year and puts us one step closer to removing this stain from the laws of our nation." “Without a repeal vote by Congress this year, the Pentagon’s hands are tied and the armed forces will be forced to continue adhering to the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law,” said Solmonese. “A solution has emerged: Congress needs to vote to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ now.”

The only problem with this, Joe, is that they voted now to possibly, maybe repeal it if the military can finish a study within the year and come up with a plan of action for integration.

All the military has to do is fail in completing one or the other.

So again, Obama left his balls along with his backbone at home in his dresser. Congress shit out some patronizing piece of garbage and you opened your mouth up wide and swallowed the whole load!

And these are our GLBT leaders fighting for our rights! If those soldiers you just compromised did their job the way that you do yours, we would have been colonized by the Middle East by now!

I grant you, Joe, you are not all powerful and you can't do it all. But then you release shit like this in support of a compromise? Come on, you're supposed to be OUR mouth piece not theirs.

We are screaming for repeal now, not repeal maybe later if you happen to feel like it. You should be echoing the same!

Jealousy!

My Best Friend:

All week, I had been thinking about what I should write about next. This morning it became kind of clear.

My best friend, Robbin. She lives almost 3,000 miles away from me and we don't talk as often as we should. But through all of these years we've managed to stay pretty close to one another. Sometimes we will chat/call daily or weekly, other times we can go a few months without more than a "hello, I hope you're doing well". Even still, I know, if I ever needed anything in my life she would do anything that it took to help me. There's nothing I wouldn't do for her either. It's kind of the beauty of our friendship.

Why, with all of this distance do we have this kind of friendship? First off, we weren't really all that close growing up, not until our senior year in high school at least. In fact, we probably argued more than anything. Even then, she would jump to my defense when my peers were cruel to me.

Beyond that, during my whole time in the service, whenever I needed to talk to someone, she was always there to let me sob through the phone at her when things had gotten emotionally rough for me.

Today we had a little time to catch up via instant messages. I hadn't told her about this blog yet, so she took a look. Somewhere in the conversation, her brilliant mind spits out the following;

In the great and grand history of our country the one consistent thing has
always been this idea of, "let's see what I can keep my neighbor from doing to keep
them from doing that whole pursuit of happiness thingy".

That phrase sums up exactly what is and has been going on in this country.

Jealousy:

As I think back on my military career it puts a lot of context to her statement. When I entered the Army to begin with, I came in with a rank of E-2 (most start at E-1 and work up). I already had an Army Achievement Medal for some work I had been doing with the recruitment office. In Basic training I earned another rank (E-3).

When I arrived at my first duty station, I was already ahead of most of the people that were fresh out of training. Other soldiers would always ask how I got all of that so quick. My answer was always the same, "attention to detail goes a long way".

I was "that guy". The one who was happy with where I was and understood how to pursue more happiness. That, I feel, is part of why everything happened the way that it did. After all, how can a gay guy be happy? He's not supposed to be in the military. He's not supposed to fish, hunt, drink beer or watch football. Perhaps because I was getting accolades and on a track to move up in the ranks it ticked off the few that had heard that I was gay.

Maybe, I should have taken all of that in as a compliment to my character. Except that, I don't. Had I been a different type of person, my life would have been ruined. Lucky for me, I am the type of person who brushes it off and moves on.

I learned a big lesson during all of this. It's the reason why, today, I am myself. I make no apologies for it. I walk through life proud that I am who I am. I believe that my lifetime will see marriage legal for the LGBT community. I believe that, love will be celebrated over hate and jealousy. I believe the time is now!

Today may end up being a two post day. Lunch break is almost over so I'll need to get back to work, but I have some other thoughts that I will be writing out tonight.

Thanks for reading!

I'm out!

Living off the wall

No Regrets:

I've always gone through life with no regrets. I never really saw the point. In general, I am a pretty happy person. I'm not exactly sure where it comes from really. You can put me in any situation. I can think calmly about how to work my way through it.

I am a puzzle guy and I attack life as if it were one big puzzle to solve. I rarely listen to how someone tells me they solved the puzzle. I like figuring it out for myself.

That is why for me, my past is MY past. I embrace it wholly as part of my journey in solving the big puzzle. I own it all. I own the accomplishments, the mistakes and everything in between.

I continue through each step knowing that, should I make a mistake I will learn from it.

But then, I think back to what got me started on blogging in the first place. It makes me think, "perhaps I don't follow the no regrets thing as closely as I think I do".

Remember in my first post, I talked about having a hard time sleeping and how that was the cause of me beginning this blog to begin with? I kept thinking about things in the past and I couldn't shut it down.

There's still so much more to the journey behind me that I haven't shared. I think there is one issue that I've sort of been avoiding. I don't know if I just haven't found it chronologically to make sense within my time line or if there is a bit of guilt, shame or regret mingled in there.

I think I do have a bit of a regret with it however, I also know for certain that if it weren't for this solitary moment in my life I would not be in the awesome place that I am right now. Seriously, I would not have stayed in Austin and I would never have met the man that I am in eternal love with. As near to perfect as my life is right now, I still can't get that part of my life out of my head. Wondering "what if".

The moment that haunts me:

So, as you are aware (if you've been reading along), I am gay and I was outed by someone to my unit. So, rather than investigate me being gay (because they really couldn't) those in my chain of command, simply put more on my plate than any human could accomplish.

I made a full attempt to complete everything to standard at all times, but fell short on numerous occasions. At first, I didn't want to believe that I was being forced all this extra because they knew I was gay. It wasn't until one of the civilian women in the congregation (remember I was a chaplain's assistant) came up to me one day and literally said, "I pray that one day you will find Jesus".

To which I responded, "What do you mean?".

I was shocked when she said, "Well the chaplain said that you are gay and that you practice Wicca".

Which is actually only half true, so I said "I don't know where he got that idea, but I'm Christian" (which was true at the time) and left it at that. Her jaw dropped and she apologized.

From there, it all just kind of spiraled for me. I mean, here's a Chaplain who is supposed to be providing for the religious needs of the unit, not pushing his on people. Yes, he probably got the idea that I was Wicca from the fact that we had 3 practitioners in our unit who I ordered literature for but that was my job. It would be no different than ordering a Torah for our Jewish soldiers.

I digressed a little by giving you that exchange, but back on point.

So now I'm being given a heap of responsibility and doing my best to accomplish all that I can and failing to complete tasks. This, to the point that I ended up pulling 16 hour days to attempt to keep up because I wanted to be all that I could be. And then knowing the reason for it all, I wanted to prove that they weren't going to put me down.

Ah but they did. It didn't take long for them to find cause to boot me out for being "sub par". I don't even remember the true wording any more. I could have just waited it out and just let it all happen but that was going to be a dishonorable discharge. So, I did my research.

Since the ball was rolling all ready, I couldn't say "you know what I'm gay". Being booted because you admit you are gay actually can be an honorable discharge (at least in the Army at that time). But, trying that once the ball was rolling would not work, they already had me on dishonorable.

So, I did the only other thing I could think of (which prior to was unthinkable). I went Absent With Out Leave (AWOL). Logically speaking (as you know I try to be logical) the discharge for that is a general discharge.

So, it was a chess game for me. I was gone for 3 months and then went to Oklahoma to out process. Simple as that.

I felt and still feel justified in how I handled it. I took the rout that would ultimately be best for me. So why the regret in it all?

Why the regret then:

As I play the whole thing over in my head, I think of what I could have done differently. Maybe I should have never dated guys at all, or at least never soldiers. I could have done what everyone else was doing. Simple anonymous guy on guy action in hotel rooms. But that was never me.

But the biggest part of it is that there are a lot of things that I don't feel justified in.

Currently, there's a big push to end Don't Ask Don't Tell. A fight that I believe in, and I would take up arms but yet, I went AWOL. How can I say that gay soldiers are serving honorably? Even though I know that I did the best that I could with what I was dealt, I took a way out that renders me fairly useless in the fight.

Maybe, just maybe, I should have foreseen that they were going to eventually try to kick me out and claimed gay before they had the chance. I don't know that's not really me though. I'd rather people think that I was a coward than to use my being gay as a crutch.

It's a little bit frustrating to tell the truth. No matter how hard I try to rationalize, I can always think of a hundred different things that I could have done to begin with.

I'll probably never get over it, but there it is.

Now the world knows, this is the single event in my past that has been gnawing at me and forced me to create this blog to begin with.

Til next time, I'm OUT!

Huckabee makes me want to vomit

On Twitter this morning I found a link to this article.

Sometimes I want to scream at the thought process of some people. Here's a point by point.

Don't Ask Don't Tell:
Of the movement to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" Huckabee said, "you don't see foot soldiers out there demanding it".

No kidding. That's because if they are out there demanding it, they will be dubbed as gay and investigated and possibly kicked out.
What you fail to understand, Mike, is that there are many soldiers who are gay but are forced to hide the fact.
What you fail to understand is that, there are many soldiers who joined the military not knowing that they are gay (because they are just 18 or 19 years old) but later figure it out and are stuck in something that they agreed to before they had all the facts.

Gay Marriage and Same Sex Unions:
Of same sex civil unions and same sex marriage he said, "You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal. That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them."

Mike, even people who use drugs, deal drugs, rape murder and are convicted and in prison are allowed to get married. Even child molesters are not stripped of the ability to get married and procreate!

So, to you, gay Americans who want nothing more than to be afforded to same protection under the law that straight Americans take for granted are lower than murderers and child molesters?

We aren't talking about incest or polygamy! Your argument is that you don't want to allow gay marriage because it can lead to other groups wanting to get married?

By your logic then, we should just get rid of marriage all together because, if it weren't for straight marriage, we gay folks would never have wanted to get married.

Yes Mike, you should accommodate my right to enter into a marriage contract with whoever I want to, so long as they are legally able to enter into that contract. By that I mean, so long as they are not bound by another marriage contract, are old enough to enter into contract (by law) and are human.

Gay adoption:
Of gay adoption Huckabee states, "I think this is not about trying to create statements for people who want to change the basic fundamental definitions of family, and always we should act in the best interest of the children, not in the seeming interest of the adults. Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?"

You're right, Mike! It's not about trying to create statements. It's about the natural human desire to want to have a family. "Family" has NEVER had a basic fundamental definition as far as the human race is concerned. You have all different kinds of families. Single fathers, single mothers, kids who have two families because their parents divorced and remarried and many other combinations.

The fact is, there are many children who are in foster care and orphanages that are simply waiting for a permanent family to care for them.

You have straight couples and in some cases single guys or girls who can't have children of their own that adopt. These kids are adopted into all different "family" styles.

Why must you assume that our motives are any different than the motives of those "straight" people? It is a basic human instinct to desire a family, just ask those kids who don't have one! Not only do you want to deny gay folks the ability to raise a family but you want to deny these kids a proper home because of your hatred for gay America!

The fact is, Mike, if you had your way all of us gays would be sitting on an island somewhere.
I have news for you! We are Americans too! You do not get to decide what is ideal for every human, only what is ideal for yourself. You already have special rights just because you happen to prefer the opposite sex. That is un-American! No special rights should be given to any one group, whether that group is a majority or not!

Conclusion:
Mike Huckabee, you make me want to vomit. In general you are a smart individual. I've heard you make sense on fiscal issues, but when it comes to this, you are flat out narrow minded.

You seem to have an inability to understand that this is not about forcing straight people to believe anything or do anything, it is about allowing us to exercise the same rights and privileges that you take for granted on a daily basis!