I held my breath last night waiting to hear our President say the words “Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” I have the hardest time understanding why we would deny countless qualified and interested Americans the opportunity to serve our nation. Nor do I understand a policy where we ask service members to put their lives on the line, just as long as they don’t share the personal truth with those they are living and working with for months at a time.
I don’t know what your work environment is like, but I often talk about family and friends with my colleagues. I enjoy hearing their stories and understanding what is going on in their lives. I can’t imagine having to make up a fake reality in order to protect my job. Nor can I imagine the betrayal I would feel if I found out that the person I am trusting my life with has been lying to be about their life. There is a new PBS documentary that deals with how these issues are impacting our service men and women. Regardless of your view point I encourage you to take a look and hear from those men and women directly impacted by DADT.
There is also an organization called Servicemembers United that has a wealth of information on the concerns with DADT as well as first hand accounts from current and past service members.
I’ve never understood how this was constitutional. You are qualified in every way for this government job but oops..turns out we don’t take folks “like you”. Well, we will as long as we don’t find out “you’re one of those”. As Obama would say “even if you disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence” that you are born gay and instead think you choose it…how is it different than “it’s okay to be Jewish as long as you don’t practice it, talk about it or admit that you were once or ever Jewish”? You can be jewish you just have to constantly deny a large part of who you are and pretend to be something you are not in order to keep your job that you’ve devoted your entire life to, that oh by the way might get you killed and is what saves the rest of our asses on a daily basis. Don’t get it. Someone give me a single reason to keep gays out of the military that wasn’t used already to exclude AA and women.
Of course I totally agree with Leon. I don’t understand how the policy can fly when we can afford to be picky, let alone when we need more people in the military. To turn down qualified motivated people? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
I can’t find a showing of the PBS documentary in our area, I’ll have to check the listings again later and see if it comes up.