Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Don’t Hide
It’s an odd time, considering it’s immediately post-Pride and the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which kick-started the gay rights movement (as it was then called). This weekend, the same weekend that San Francisco was demonstrating that it’s a hugely inclusive city, police officers raided a new gay bar in Fort Worth, Texas, arresting people and allegedly using undue force while doing so.
This afternoon, The President of the United States hosted a Stonewall ‘celebration’ in the White House for a highly select guest list of ‘A Gays’ and largely tame campaigning groups at which he offered a few platitudes about how the LGBT community will be happy by the time he’s up for re-election.
Tomorrow, conversely, Lt Dan Choi, who I mentioned yesterday, will be in front of a review board who will kick him out of his job. They pretty much don’t have a choice under DADT. The President, however, does have the choice to sign an order that would say, basically, stop enforcing this law until we get rid of it legislatively. He did the same thing around a week ago to stop living immigrant spouses of deceased Americans being deported. But it seems since that only applies to people in ‘real’ marriages (thank you again DOMA), it’s supportive of heterosexuals and therefore fits his apparent worldview.
At Pride yesterday Choi was sporting a t-shirt displaying the slogan that his sister devised to counter the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Message - Don’t Hide. Which is a sentiment that goes back to Harvey Milk and beyond, and which is as true today as it was when Harvey gave this speech. Hearing that during a screening of The Times of Harvey Milk was possibly the defining moment in my own LGBT awareness. Please have a listen.
I know this site has probably become an unpleasantly shrill thing to read in recent weeks, what with me banging on about the LGBT stuff so much, but this blog is meant to be about my experiences having suddenly become a resident of this city, and it’s increasingly difficult, given that it is THIS city, and that I’m a politically aware gay man who’s been involved in plenty of campaigning against injustice in his time, not to find this to be the defining material of my view.
Obama, the ‘fierce advocate’ is a bitter disappointment.