An infantry officer in Afghanistan explains the personal relevance of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
Sir,
This is indeed revolutionary stuff. Not the deliberate reconsideration of the DADT issue, but that you’re actively encouraging such an adult, open dialog.
I’m one of your officers, currently deployed supporting a WIAS tasker and I look forward to my Division meeting up with me here in Afghanistan. My partner of 10 years and I have happily accepted the various assignments the Army has given me this past decade and have weathered my two 12-month-long and one 15-month-long deployments like, I would imagine, nearly every other couple – save for one detail: the partner I leave behind has no support from any official channels. He would be notified after my brother who is listed as my Emergency POC/NOK. After 10 years, my partner has earned the right to be told first about my death. He has earned the right to make my health emergency decisions. And, he has earned the right to be recognized for his sacrifices just as any other spouse. The exception being that he is not a spouse. We are not a recognized couple. And the very fact that he and I live in a marriage-like relationship could cause us to lose my pension and our financial security later in life.
As a former combat arms commander, I’ve had to face the DADT issue not just because I am gay – an imutable characteristic that is no more a choice for me than someone could choose their race – but because I’ve had 4 gay men in my command who I have known to be gay. I knew about two of them because they believed that living a lie was counter to their ethical charge as Soldiers. One was chaptered and the other was transferred. I knew about another because he was outed by an Evangelical roommate who had “baited” him into admitting it to him. He was not chaptered because we were a week from deploying and no one believed he really was gay. When he left the Army after we redeployed, he came back to tell me that indeed, he was gay. And, I knew about the fourth one because after he died of wounds from an IED, his partner of four years wrote me – not knowing my orientation – to tell me how much SSG ___ loved the Army, how we were the only family he’d ever known, and how much he appreciated the support of his fellow NCOs who knew about his personal life and whose spouses back home had taken care of him (the partner).
The “there’s a gay dude looking at me in the shower/coming on to me in the fox hole” argument is a pathetic, lame canard. Having been through more than my share of the Army’s best lodging – Ranger School comes to mind, as do the Hindu Kush, the desert in Iraq, and multiple Army gyms across world – I can tell you that the only thing I’ve ever thought about while showering was getting in and getting out. I’d be lying if I was to say that I’ve not worked with attractive people. We all have. But the difference between being an animal and a professional is, among other things, our ability to control ourselves. And, the only thing I’ve ever thought about in actual combat was living long enough to take care of my guys and to make it home alive.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this ongoing discussion. And, I hope that if GEN Ham and his panel ask you what your opinion is, that you answer based on the facts, on the beliefs of this current generation of Soldier, and that you eschew the bigoted hypotheses of those who do not believe that the only way for Soldiers to truly be the Soldiers they are ethically charged to be, is to be honest with their buddies, honest with their chain of command, and honest to themselves.
This post is for MLK Day. It’s also prompted by the coincidental approximate anniversary of RaceFail, which began in January of last year. (Missed the fun? Google is your friend. But here is a good place to start.) For those who want the Twitter version, RaceFail was a several-months-long conversation about race in the context of science fiction and fantasy that sprawled across the blogosphere. It involved several thousand participants and spawned several hundred essays — and it hasn’t really ended yet, just slowed down. But the initial outburst was very frank, and frequently very heated, and over the course of the whole thing a number of well-known or influential personalities in the field said things that revealed problematic assumptions/thinking about people of color, or race issues in general. Hence the “fail” suffix.
نبرد مردم ایران برای آزادی، همه دنیا را در بهت وحیرت فرو برده است. در این تصاویر اوج دلیری و شهامت یک ملت در برابر استبداد را می توان دید. در مقابل این خشم مقدس، هیچ قدرت نظامی و هیچ استبدادی را یارای ایستادن نیست
Looking something like a mix of Pocahontas and a tornado at a thrift store, the Apple Store Indie is your typical #fauxhemian. Masking her love for Steve Jobs products with whatever your blind grandma wore 40 years ago, she blends in seamlessly with the rest of her contemporaries at All Points West Festival.
Tweeting endlessly about nothing other than questions to a fake Ezra Koenig account, her main source of news is whatever happens to be a trending topic on twitter. Her iphone isn’t just a means to tell people what type of sandwich she is eating, she also uses it to cover Passion Pit’s “Sleepyhead” using only app store instruments with her hipster friends.
Getting musical recommendations from last.fm or whatever Jenny Eliscu and Jake Fogelnest play on satellite radio, her entire “scene” seems to only exist in digital format. The only physical music she owns are vinyl hand me downs that serve as decorative filler for her Ikea Billy bookshelf. She rarely if ever supports her local indie music scene unless it is someone spinning records (see: itunes playlist) at a scenester bar.
Unable to make sales of her diy junk through her etsy store, she has set up shop at a number of craft fairs across the tri state area. Unfortunately everyone else was selling the same trite octopus necklaces, owl earrings and onesies she slapped together. Upset with the lack of enthusiasm towards her creations, she will later blog about it to an audience of spambots.
this bro has gone through every possible scene phase in the past few years, so he reverts back to hip hop- which he vaguely remembers being cool in fourth grade. signs of his previous flings with the “scene” are still apparent in his plugs, hidden tattoos and the swoop haircut that resides under his fitted cap.
inspired by icons such as pharrel and jay z, the faux hip-hopper runs his own urban streetwear line that mainly consists of googled images and all-over gold leaf printing. references to drugs, pop culture, and blatantly copyrighted images are a must.
he proudly displays his $800 bape hoodie which is, unbeknownst to him, a fake. his shop of choice is karmaloop.com, and frequently spends way more than he is worth on limited-edition nike dunks.
although he favors hip hop and lists his ethnicity as “of african descent” on myspace, he resides somewhere in portland and plays drums for a metalcore band. to make things worse, the faux hip-hop scenester doesn’t know a single black person and fears for his life when one enters the room.
“Faux Hip Hop,” “Working Class Skin” and more at Your Scene Sucks by RISD alum Rob Dobi.
