Photo: Tina Fineberg / AP
So, Wednesday, I went to a lesbian bachelorette party, and an Associated Press reporter was there.
In this Wednesday, July 20, 2011, photo, Jeanette Coleman, second from left, and her partner Kawane Harris kiss as Dan Choi, left, holding a West Point Cadet saber, and Scott Wooledge, right, holding a sheath, rehearse a wedding arch above the couple during a bachelorette party for Coleman and Harris at Choi's apartment in New York Wednesday July 20, 2011.
I don't often post personal essays. This is an odd intersection of my activist life and my personal life. And since an Associate Press reporter insinuated herself into my personal life, I guess I'll go ahead and share. Here's a personal essay appropos of today's marriage equality event, and encompassing a lot of intersectionality of some issues we've fought for. (And, yes, that's me on the far right in the picture above.)
I became aware of Dan Choi when most of the country did, when he came out of the closet on the national TV on the Rachel Maddow Show. Our lives since crossed many times in the course of our shared activism and my blogging. I've come to know him pretty well, and feel blessed to count him among my friends. It has certainly not been without awkward moments to be both friend and "reporter" to a subject. I've mostly tried to rely on reporting from other sources if I have an occasion to write about Dan, so as to avoid compromising our friendship.
Wednesday, Dan invited me to a small get-together he was having for his friends from the Metropolitan Community Church to celebrate their impending nuptials. Dan recently signed a lease on a Manhattan apartment and he seemed very excited about the prospect of entertaining friends there. He was a charming and attentive host throughout the evening.
He called it a bachelorette party. But, as it disappointingly lacked strippers and both brides-to-be were in attendance, I would have called it a engagement party. Dan also knows Jeanette from their work in DADT repeal activism. Jeanette served our country and was also discharged from the Army under DADT.
The Associated Press reached out to Dan because they were doing a story on how the gays are getting prepared for the big day, and asked if they could send someone. (Because you know, Dan is the only gay in the AP's rolodex.) The top picture is from that story, linked above, there is a beautiful gallery of shots from the evening there. The other photos here are my own.
The cake said "Equality," the tiaras said "Bitch." Jeanette cuts the engagement cake with Dan's West Point Cadet Sabre. Another evening, drinking hard liquor with veterans and playing with very long knives. What could go wrong?
Jeanette was recently ordained as a Southern Baptist Minister, and re-enlisted in the service and will serve as a chaplain. She said, "Now the the DOD will have one less Chaplain who won't minister to LGB troops." The gay infiltration agenda marches forward.
Jeanette's original DADT discharge proceedings dragged out for two long years, as she fought to retain benefits and rank the DOD sought to strip. She lost the rank fight and her rank was downgraded. She retained VA medical benefits, but they denied her continued dental coverage. Such insane levels of pettiness are, in my experience, unfortunately not unusual to hear. Really, DOD? It's gonna break the bank to cover one lesbian's teeth cleaning at a VA facility? What are you really trying to accomplish with a dick move like that?
It is great to hear that she apparently encountered no problem re-enlisting, despite her record as a "known lesbian" being well documented. This is the first I've heard of such an enlistment. She unfortunately will be welcomed back at a lower rank than she would have been had the DADT discharge not occurred. The DOD has not yet announced how, if at all, they will be addressing other situations like Jeanette's.
Despite horrific stories like Jeanette's, I am always impressed how many DADT dischargees express the desire to re-enlist. The desire to serve is strong in many people.
Jeanette met Kawane Harris, who works in the health services industry, via MySpace in 2008. She told Kawane before they'd ever met face to face, "You're gonna be my wife someday."
Today, they share responsibility for raising two children, a daughter of 13 and son of 18, they each had prior to meeting. Apparently, teenaged girls are no easier for two moms to manage than one. Some things are universal.
The DOD has confirmed, gay spouses will get none of the benefits that heterosexual servicemembers get. This will mean Jeanette and Kawane will have to absorb all the costs of relocation and additional housing should Jeanette be assigned elsewhere. I asked the couple if they worried about the effect on their family life that Jeanette's reenlistment might have.
In unison, Jeanette said, "No." Kawane said, "I don't know."
Ok.
Unlike heterosexual spouses, Kawane can expect no assistance from the US Government in finding new employment should she be forced to relocate. They both did seem confident Kawane's skill set would allow her to find work wherever Jeannette's assignment took her. Other couples may not be so fortunate.
Wednesday night Jeanette and Kawane were biting their nails hoping they'd be one of the lucky lottery winners allowed to get an actual license on Sunday. Yesterday, the City of New York announced the number who entered the lottery was not so much more than the 764 cap they set and they were just gonna go ahead and marry all who applied for the lottery. It was a kind and classy decision for the City to make. GLAAD has kicked off a social media campaign to thank the state and city, with Facebook, Twitter and other elements. I approve.
A DADT discharge is never really over, and Dan still has issues from his. Saturday he sent out this message updating the story he was being sued to repay his signing bonus. He wrote:
"The president's liaison Brian Bond acknowledged receipt of my letter but I have not heard anything. The creditors and IRS have already sent me warnings and it seems likely the Veterans benefits (50% disability check) from my service and Iraq war disabilities will be cut off shortly. With interest accrued, the total comes to $3,251.77."
I suspect $3,251.77 is no insurmountable sum for Dan. Of course, his refusal to pay is based on principle. The military uses any excuse to pinch pennies when it comes to caring for our veterans when they're done with them, and that they're gay is handiest excuse of all.
Dan's situation is far from unique. Former Petty Officer 2nd Class and Hebrew linguist Jason Knight was made to repay $1,300, and Colorado University ROTC Cadet Mara Boyd who was sued to repay $30,000. It's certainly unclear how many other veterans don't go to the media. I am sure many. I know Dan makes a fuss to draw attention to all these injustices, not merely for his own benefit. These policies should stop, but they're not.
The Department of Justice is currently in the midst of defending a similar policy in the ACLU's challenge of Collins vs. United States. The DOD initiated a regulation in 1991 to cut gay soldier's separation pay in half. They could settle the case for $2M. I would guess it will cost the DOJ that much to defend the case all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Kossacks will be happy to know the Community Quilt they gave to Dan has a prominent place in his new home. It stays folded neatly on his sectional in the living room (you can also see it in the cake photo above). To the left, on the window sill, sit some of the handful of awards of appreciation he has received from various organizations.
Dan receives constant (and not always undeserved) criticism from all quarters, gay, straight, conservative, progressive, civilian and military. He is perhaps the antithesis of President Obama; Dan seeks not to placate all people but to provoke. Looking at the awards, he quipped to me they were a nice reminder that not everyone hated him. I know the quilt warms his heart to think of the affection the Daily Kos community sent him at a difficult time.
This new apartment is, at 30 years of age, the first place Dan can call wholly his own. The very first place he can put down roots as an adult. And the change I see in him is very positive. He is glowing. This year will be good for him.
Dan is a collection of contradictions, a human embodiment of the ying and the yang, in my experience. He is a fierce, uncompromising warrior with a playful child's spirit.
He is, on one hand, worldly beyond most of our comprehension, having had a kaleidoscope of some very disparate experiences. He is the son of an Asian immigrant fundamentalist Preacher. He is also an American and a soldier. He is fluent in Arabic and was embedded in a mideast culture to which he clearly bonded. All this gives him insight on things it's hard for anyone to learn from books (though he is also a voracious reader). He spent 2006 and 2007 in the combat zone in Iraq and has seen things most of us civilians have only seen in movies. And I don't mean good things.
And he transitioned from 11 years of a nomadic life serving our country here and abroad into a nomadic life serving the LGBT community across the country and the world.
It's very easy to forget or overlook how because of the very unique circumstances of his life, many of the simple rites of passage the vast majority of us go through in our earlier years, Dan has yet to experience, like having his own apartment. The high-profile national odyssey he first embarked on in 2009 was kicked off by the simple act of his falling in love for the first time. "Love is worth it," he is fond of saying.
His idealism can seem at times like naiveté.
And I guess in some ways, it absolutely is naiveté. Only a real Dreamer would seriously imagine we could ever get to the endgame our grand schemes, whatever the goal: full equality for LGBTs worldwide; campaign finance reform that takes big corporate money out of the equation; dismantling of monopoly of the military industrial complex; ending American Imperialism; eradication of bigotry, racism and misogyny; single payer health care in America; wide implementation of clean, renewable energy sources; reversal of global climate change; prioritizing the protection of our environment over other interests.
Or of course, committing to one person until "Death Do You Part."
Clearly, such talk is pure madness. You would have to be crazy to think anyone could ever pull any of that off.
8:47 AM PT:
Friday was Kawane's 36 birthday.
8:53 AM PT: Press mayhem in lower Manhattan.
9:03 AM PT: One sad, lonely hater all by himself yelling "Homosexuals are perverts. Lesbians are perverts. They can't reproduce, so they have to recruit our children."
9:13 AM PT: Aw, look at all the (not so) lonely people.
Long lines. Hearing it's just about an hour.
9:21 AM PT: Sam Bee and her opposite marriage husband Jason Jones from the Daily Show are interviewing couples.
9:26 AM PT:
9:39 AM PT: Dan Choi chats with folks as he waits to be Jeanette's Best Man. Rev. Pat of Metropolitan Community Church will arrive soon to perform the ceremony in Foley Square Park.
Seen crouching in red T-shirt is Cathy Marino-Thomas Executive Director of Marriage Equality New York. She worked 13 years for this day.
9:48 AM PT: Rev Pat, a beloved spiritual guide of NYC's LGBT Community makes an enterance worthy of any glitterati. Many folks ceremonies can begin.
9:51 AM PT: Sam looks grump. She isn't. I talked to her. She reads the "Gay Penguins" children's book to her kids (allegedly with Jason, left).
10:08 AM PT: And it's done! Mazel Tov! Wife and wife seen with MENY's Rob and his new husband Manuel.
10:15 AM PT: Sheila and Cathy Marino-Thomas, with daughter Jackie (right) and her friend Evan. The couple were married in Massachuttees in 2004.
10:25 AM PT: Party music blasts out of a stretch pink limousine. Very few haters showed to poop in the punchbowl. Isn't the world going to end? You'd think they'd show for that.
3:07 PM PT: Any bloggers or news media that would like to use these photos have my expressed permission for all but the first (which is not mine). The rest are my work, and you are free to use them. Credit appreciated.