Finally.
Finally.
Finally.
Finally.
Finally finally finally finally
FINALLY!
A minute before I left for work yesterday, I checked my e-mail for the second time since I'd woken up. I was expecting nothing new.
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has ended!
God bless Sen. Patrick Leahy, imbued with a strong Irish name, a strong spine and a strong commitment to progressive values, for that. It showed up in my e-mail inbox like an early Christmas present.
Just as I finished reading Senator Leahy's announcement, my wife left the bedroom. We needed to leave or I'd be late for work (not a big issue on a Saturday, but it's still work and I still get paid to be there editing, not to be on my way there to edit).
"The Senate repealed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" I said simply.
What else needs to be said? Everything else, for nonservicemembers, is details -- dutifully provided by slinkerwink.
I scooted over so my wife could sit on the couch and read the gift from Senator Leahy. And I began to cry.
As much as I favor equal rights for all people, I know that I will never feel certain civil rights victories for black people (for all Americans, yes, but ... forgive me ... for black people in particular) as they do. I'm fine with that. I wasn't there for the marches, I wasn't alive for the assassinations, I didn't feel the tear gas in my eyes, I didn't hear people call me a nigger, I didn't see my tattered math textbook and my white friend's new book September after September.
As much as I detest racism, and as little concern as I have for the skin color of my co-workers (I don't care if they're more orange than John Boehner; I care about if they can write well and on time), people who do get those looks or do get challenged at their polling places or are just plain black feel relevant parts of this country's past more deeply than I do.
And as much as I support equal rights for all people, I know that I will never feel stories about abortion limitations and lower wages and glass ceilings and single motherhood and forced sex work as deeply as women do. That's fine. I don't wonder if my salary would be higher if I were female because that thought is ludicrous; that thought would not be ludicrous were I a woman. I don't wonder about this or that or the other thing dealing with gender politically because I have 83 male senators; if something would benefit white men with college degrees, odds are decent it would benefit me.
And as much as I read about genocide and cry for people who will never get to where I am because they must climb for a decade to get to where I was when I was 5, they will feel that experience and those like it more deeply because they were there.
So you'll forgive me for this or you won't, but I think maybe I feel the end of the military's ban on people like me more than some of the rest of you because those are my people.
I could write thousands of words on the sense of otherness, the sense of deliberate and ignorance-based discriminatory barrier, represented by DADT.
I could explore the purposeful lack of agency presented by DADT -- how it prevents people from doing what they're good at.
I could look at military suicide rates and military divorce rates and wonder to what extent they're exacerbated by this policy.
I could look at the repeal as a jobs bill -- a jobs bill that will add exactly nothing to the deficit and will likely eliminate part of it because we won't be wasting our money training people who will be tossed from their posts for something unrelated to their work performance and conduct.
Or I could borrow from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and look at it as a matter of national security.
I could examine it from the perspective of military personnel from countries with no gay ban and suggest that this will lead to higher morale because gay soldiers will no longer be worried about being seen with same-sex foreign personnel after hours by someone who already has an interest in getting them out of the military.
I could look at the social change it will engender -- the military is absolutely a social institution -- and offer thoughts on how long it will be before the "This actually isn't the worst thing since the Edsel" mindset kicks in with enough people that we get gay marriage and other fun things because being queer is actually not all that much more exciting than being straight.
I could talk about how much garbage I bet I'm going to hear from my (largely socially conservative) relatives in the next few days. They don't know I'm bisexual. (I don't fancy coming out at holidays -- feeds too much into the notion of queers being all about drama.)
Eight topics generated in a few minutes. I could find more pretty easily, even without the one topic I can't write about -- being gay in the military.
But here's one you won't read about a lot:
Take a gay teenager just out of high school. Comes out to her parents, disowned. Happens. Now what's she going to do? She needs a sense of self-worth, she needs people to value her skills, she needs structure and a family -- she needs a healthy environment.
And a job wouldn't hurt either.
If she's been smart about things, she's been keeping herself physically healthy. (If she hasn't been smart about things, which is entirely not uncommon, her road is not so easy.) She's passed all of her classes, she's physically fit, and she has no conditions barring her from serving her country.
Now, will it be an easy transition from whatever high school was to what the Army will be? Not on your life. Ignoring things like boot camp, getting up before God and wondering what the kcuf you've gotten yourself into, what homophobia exists in the military will not die tomorrow or next month or next year. The social change of integrating the military took years upon years (and years after that) to kill the Venus flytraps of racism. And getting people's heads wrapped around the incredible mundanity of serving with someone who is queer will take a hell of a lot of boredom or a hell of a lot of gunfire, and maybe both and hopefully neither, but it ain't gonna be This Homo's Army tomorrow.
But it's better than a bunch of alternatives.
When I found out the ban had been repealed, I cried at home, and then I had to stop because I had to look professional at work.
And I cried at work and hid it pretty well. Helps that nobody looks at me unless I give 'em a reason to.
I had to hide it a lot. The repeal of DADT was a pretty big story. It ran inside my newspaper (and it ran more prominently in a lot of other newspapers, I expect, but one thing at a time), and I had to work the story, so I had to read it, and it was a more emotional situation than reading about Walter Cronkite's death, Ted Kennedy's death and Barack Obama's election. Maybe put together. More emotional than when one of my childhood broadcasters, Skip Caray, died. More emotional than getting married a day after a friend died.
And I had to bury it for eight hours.
But that's kind of pocket change compared to the decades I will have to enjoy it.
Later today, I will be at the airport (two airports, actually, but "I will be at the airports" reads weird). Coming or going, I tend to see a fair number of folks in fatigues.
I tend not to talk to them, since they are usually busy going wherever and I would become a tearful wreck within a minute of saying anything -- "You ... you put your life on the life for me. I ... how can I repay ... I guess I could start by mopping the floor where I've just soaked your shoes in tears!"
A year or however long from now, when the repeal is realized, I wonder if one of them will see my Matthew Shepard bracelet, realize an ally is near and, being careful to avoid the ensuing puddle of tears, try to recruit me.