Back when Clinton was first looking at the gays in the military issue, a group of creeps at an army base in North Carolina decided to go out, get drunk, and beat up a faggot. So they went into a bar, found a man that they thought was gay, and beat him to death. I wrote an e-mail to the White House and argued that they should accept gays and get rid of the people who wouldn't accept them. Of course, the Clinton administration was interested in keeping the votes of those bigots with all the associated generals, rear admirals, senators and congressmen.

They ended up settling for don't ask don't tell, probably hoping that if the gays kept out of sight, nobody would bother them. This didn't turn out to be the case, bigots being bigots. Of course, rightwing bigots tend to feel that they are the way they are because God has commanded it, so they add sanctimony to hatred and intolerance and their other sins. This makes it harder to persuade them. On some matters it isn't necessary to persuade them. They used to feel the same way about blacks.

The Obama administration needs to take a good long look at other militaries around the world who have successfully integrated gays into their militaries. No, not Belgium and the Netherlands. I am thinking about Israel. Now there's an effeminate, touchy-feely military, right? But of course people on the right don't like to consider the way furners run things, do they?

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as an ageing queer, i have a lot of experience with being exploited by somebody who thinks they can get something or need something from me. the trouble is that i still expect that promise to call in a day or two actually to materialize. it's a form of self deception which really wounds the soul.

the truth is that anyone who can still assert separate but equal is either lying or deceiving themselves. all families are sacred, by definition so to paraphrase Dorothy PARKER heterosexist marriage is not normal, but only common. at the same time he changes his agenda on DADT, he says he'll adjust the defense of marriage, but no longer promises to repeal it.

Obama's discomfort with us has been made perfectly and explicitly and openly and obviously clear [some of my best friends are fill in the blank]. our existence embarrasses him. he wishes we'd "move on." don't ask him, he won't tell.

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the fact is DADT hurts the military. Their macho culture results in an epidemic of rape, in the failure to prepare for and the failure to treat trauma and brain injury, in suicide at an epidemic rate and in vets left to fend for themselves. they can't prosecute rape because of the L word, and the F word. we lose critical intel, and critical medical specialties and costs for training critical specialties because of the right wing "christian" ideological propaganda that has become the main agenda of significant senior officers willing to sacrifice the whole country on the altar of their dogmatic hate theology.

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