DADTDP: don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue.
DOMA: Defense Of Marriage Act
I was 15 [16 when it came into effect] at the time of DADTDP coming to terms with who I was and how society would treat me.
Don’t ask: OK that is private, but pretty obvious all the same, it never was a confusion as far as I was concerned.
Don’t tell: That sort of struck me as a gagging order.
Don’t pursue: I could be hunted like a criminal if I admitted who I am?
I remember the nastiness, but being told well, we have come up with a compromise. Funny that, I can’t compromise who I am, but someone else can do that for me and then force me to do the same. During the campaign it was much simpler and clearer than that.
I had seriously thought of a career in the The United States Army Corps of Engineers [USACE] specifically in the ERDC, I decided it was not viable as a career path for me.
Then came DOMA
Now that took the biscuit for confusion, was marriage a secular law, a religious tenet, or a nasty combination of both? The mix of verbal support for the possibility of marriage and the support of legislative denial was more than confusing. Personally just as long civil union and marriage conferred the same rights that would be fine, it is what Marie-Louise and I have.
They have confused me ever since, the evolving and the contradictions continue and if only it was restricted just to my rights I could perhaps accept the noise generated.
You can say it is just politics, but as a fifteen year old it didn’t make it any easier as society then stood, even now as a xx year old [do the maths, oh the UK influence] it still rankles. The more often it happens, the more I have problems with not getting angry. I would rather not go through it all yet again. Triangulation might seem fine as a strategy until you are the one being triangulated.
I’ll vote for whomever wins the Democratic Party Primary in the general, but I hope it is with confidence rather than suspicion.
Just a thought