No More Holding Hands In The Dark....DADT

When we send our young men and women off to war we often laud them as heroes for giving up their personal freedoms in order to defend ours. They give up the ability to do so many things that we take for granted on the average day, to put their lives on the line to make sure we can continue to live in freedom. This is a sentiment that has been passed around so much...and used for political gain...that it sometimes seems to be  cliche but it also happens to be totally true. When you give up the ability to go out on a Saturday night with your best freinds or simply spend a day watching t.v. and instead chose to do a service for your country in which you may not come home to enjoy those simple freedoms....you deserve to be considered a hero. So why do we draw a line at gay and lesbian soldiers and say, "Not these guys. They don't count." Does their life not carry the same value as a heterosexual soldiers life? Is not their sacrifice the same?

Not when we treat those same soldiers, who are making the same sacrifices, as criminals or predators because they happen to be gay. Such are the stories told by those dismissed under Don't Ask, Don't Tell....Such as Just-A-Joe the anonymous gay soldier who blogged about his time in the service, his unintentional coming out, and emminent dismissal. But nothing I can say will be as powerfull as their own words...

Squeeky wheels...Dan Choi Back On Active Duty

The old adage goes: "The squeeky wheel gets the grease". So it seems to be with Lt. Dan Choi, who has recently been recalled to active military service. This is an interesting development in the DADT repeal debate to say the least....but I find myself conflicted about it. After all, why now? Why only choi?

You may ask...Wasn't Lt. Choi already discharged? I had thought so. Apparently, he was served with the discharge papers but was given the option to fight it in court. The details of which have been all over the news in the past year. However, during this time, Lt. Choi has been  very vocal, and very visable in his advocacy for a DADT repeal. You could him speaking at any big gay event he had time to squeeze onto his schedule. This falls Equality march had Lt. Choi giving a rousing speach in uniform as well as placing a wreath at the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier in the name of all gay servicemen and women. He has been at an unimaginable number of pride events and more than a few fundraising dinners....all of this in addition to television interviews. You can't think of DADT now without thinking of Lt. Choi., such has been the magnitude of his visibility on the issue.