First, I called my representative to urge him to repeal DADT. Click here to find out who your representative is. The Human Rights Campaign has a short script you can use. They also have a form that allows you to send a letter to your local newspaper(s). Here's what I had to say:
Who is Don't Ask, Don't Tell protecting?
It protects straight men from the white, gay men who might pursue them, right? Think again. Who is being discharged from the military because of DADT?
Women. And minorities.
45% of troops discharged under DADT were minorities, while minorities were 30% of the service. Women accounted for 34% of the discharges but were 14% of the military. You don't need to be a math genius to see how disproportionate these numbers are.
Who is this protecting? Not the women and men being forced out of the army. Minorities, particularly blacks, enter the army at higher rates, often in an effort to better their lives.
So who is this protecting? Straight men? By removing lesbians?
So who is this protecting? Women? Then we'd better remove all the straight men.
So who is this protecting? A system of racial intolerance, misogyny, and bigotry towards homosexuals? Ah, I think we're on to something.
DADT protects only the small-minded from having to confront their prejudices. I think it high time they lost that privilege in favor of the women and men who risk their lives for a nation of people who treat them like so much refuse.
They recommend keeping it below 200 words to give it greater likelihood of being printed. According to the site
Writing to your local papers is a surefire way to impact the debate in Washington. Every member of Congress reads his or her local papers' reader-submitted letters to the editor, because they all know that the conversation going on in the letters section is also going on around dinner tables all over their districts.
So please, take a moment to write a short letter. You can borrow mine, if you like.
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According to my Ex-Marine roommate, DADT is to protect homosexual men and women from getting lynched. In his eyes, they're better off discharged than poisoned/shanked/shot/hanged by their fellow soldiers. I suppose he's appealing to some sort of redneck soldier stereotype of some kind...
ReplyDeleteAren't there statistics showing IF in fact there IS any correlation whatsoever to bigots and their enrollment in the military? I'm sorry to have erected a few strawmen here, but honestly, when I think of "people who are tolerant of homosexuality", I think of OUR friends... NONE of whom except for my roommate are in the military. There's Aondil (I'm not gonna post his real name on the internet >_>), who's TRYING to get into the military, but he'll be the first one to admit that he's less comfortable with homosexuals than the rest of us are. Most of the people I know who are tolerant, of course acknowledging that this is JUST among people I actually KNOW, are more likely to hug trees, braid flower chains into necklaces, and wear tie-dye, if you know what I mean, than join the military--myself included!
Check out this article, which discusses a survey showing that most troops are okay with gays serving openly.
ReplyDeleteAnd even though some in the military are opposed to it, screw them. The situation is comparable to the days when blacks and whites began to integrate. Some people raised hell, there was violence, but ultimately, people got over it.
Racism still exists, and I wouldn't expect homophobia to disappear either. It's an unfortunate byproduct of a culture that has nurtured that mentality for so long. But we can make it generally safe to integrate and I think letting bigots call the shots through threat of violence would be bowing to terrorism.
Come to think of it, that also reminds me of the clinic that will not be offering abortion services, as they intended, due to threat of violence. And people think terrorists only wear turbans and fly planes.