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DADT Repeal Celebration - Personal Reflections

UPDATED 9-21-11: The Virginian Pilot had a few photos from the event. The boyfriend and I are in the background in one set out below. In another is a young Navy seaman who says repeal felt "like a rock being lifted from his shoulders. Not surprisingly, some of the subscriber comments on the article display hate and ignorance of a level that must make Pat Robertson smile. With such bigotry and ignorance, it's no surprise that the Brookings Institute described Hampton Roads as "old, slow and not too bright."

This evening the boyfriend and I attended the local celebration of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, at Waterside on the downtown Norfolk waterfront fittingly across the water from shipyards working on several U.S. Navy vessels sitting in dry dock. I'm not the best judge of crowds, but I'd venture that there were several hundred people in attendance.The principal speakers were Tracy Thorne-Begland who made waves and appeared on national news programs back in the early 1990's, former Congressman Glenn Nye who voted for DADT repeal and Eric Fanning, Deputy Under Secretary for the Navy.

The comments and remarks were moving - especially those of Thorne and Fanning and admittedly, I felt myself tearing up briefly a few times - especially since I had friends at the event who were discharged under DADT and many others who served honorably in secrecy. Equally moving was the presence of a number of active duty military service members. Some in dress uniform, some in military fatigues and many more in civilian dress. To many readers, DADT likely remains a theoretical issue whereas here it impacts huge numbers of individuals daily, including close friends and associates.

I welcome the demise of the religious based bigotry that DADT enshrined. But much needs to be done. Far too many LGBT Americans remain third or fourth class citizens in their own home states and we do not enjoy full equality under the federal laws either. All so that self-enriching whores of the professional Christian set can enjoy a financially comfortable life from peddling hatred and division and so that the psychologically warped can feel better about themselves by discriminating against gay and lesbian Americans. The sickness of religious based discrimination needs to be eradicated and religion needs to be driven out of the civil laws once and for all. Likewise, the deference (dare I say special rights?) given to religion - be it in the form of DOMA, Virginia's anti-gay constitutional amendment or other forms - a force that has ruined and/or resulted in the slaughter of millions of lives over the centuries needs to end NOW.

Buffalo, New York Gay Teen Kills Himself After Years of Bullying

The celebratory mood of today as DADT dies and is relegated and thrown on the trash heap of history is muted by the news that 14 year old Jamey Rodemeyer (pictured at right) killed himself last weekend after enduring what his parents say was years of anti-gay bullying. Bullying supported and given the appearance of acceptability by self-enriching hate merchants like Maggie Gallagher, William Donohue (both Gallagher and Donohue rake in over $350,000 a year peddling anti-gay hatred), Victoria Cobb, Tony Perkins, Pope Benedict XVI and others who make a mockery of Christianity. As a parent, I cannot imagine the grief of his parents. And quite candidly, I feel immeasurable rage. Rage that a young life was made a living Hell all because of religious beliefs that I am increasingly coming to see as mere myths or at best seriously manipulated and re-written stories of Christ's followers. Instead of love of others, these bastards enshrine hatred and revel in and enrich themselves by the denigration of others. This reality leaves me feeling physical nauseous. First, here are highlights from WIVB-TV 4:

A young life has been cut tragically short by suicide. Now, two grief stricken parents are vowing to carry on their son's message. Jamey Rodemeyer's parents believe years of bullying drove their son to suicide. The Williamsville North freshman took his life Sunday, he was only 14 years old.

Jamey Rodemeyer posted a message online hoping that others would be inspired by his struggle with bullying. A part of the message reads, “That's all you have to do. Just love yourself and you're set. And I promise you, it'll get better.”

Soon after coming home from a family camping trip, Jamey was found dead Sunday. His parents say he was always under pressure because of struggles with his sexuality.

Jamey’s mother Tracy Rodemeyer said, "So he hung around with the girls a lot, so then the teasing started happening like 'Oh you're such a girl or you're gay or whatever and that bothered him for many years."

Buffalo News has additional coverage and here are some excerpts:

In the months prior, he routinely blogged about school bullying and thoughts of suicide in between upbeat posts about his pop star idol Lady Gaga and the ordinary types of teen rants typical for kids his age.

On Sept. 8, he wrote: "No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you're the ones calling me [gay slur] and tearing me down."

He put up a separate post that day letting everyone know it was National Suicide Prevention Week.

Then he posted the lyrics to a song by Hollywood Undead:
I just wanna say good bye, disappear with no one knowing
I don't wanna live this lie, smiling to the world unknowing
I dont want you to try, you've done enough to keep me going
I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine for the very last time.

Issues of bullying and even suicide talk were not new to many of Jamey's family or friends. They were common topics for him and seemed to ramp up to an extreme level when other students started making taunts with gay references to Jamey about 12 months ago on his Formspring account, which permits anonymous posts.

"JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!" read one post.

Another read: "I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!"

Personally, I hope that Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, and so many others who have worked to give anti-gay bigotry respectability (and all too often enriched themselves in the process) have earned themselves a special place in Hell where they will be forced to experience they misery that they have helped to inflict on so many others. They have rivers of blood on their hands. As I have noted before, the most tawdry whore is the height of virtue compared to these foul individuals.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Is Ireland Setting the New Standard for Government Treatment of Religion?

For much of Ireland's history, the Roman Catholic Church was a de facto government with the Church's power and influence extending into every area of Irish everyday life - even when what is now the Republic of Ireland was under British rule. Now, belatedly, the Irish government seems poised to end the Church's co-rule of the country and do much to limit the Church's ability to be above the law. It's a phenomenon much needed in other countries, the United States in particular where for far too long religious institution have been treated with kid gloves and afforded undeserved deference. In Ireland, the never ending exposure of new details of the Church's horrific sex abuse scandal has been the catalyst for this change. A similar change in government mind set is needed in America, although with the Republican Party now a quasi-religious party the change will be difficult to achieve at the present time. Here are highlights from the New York Times that look at the Irish governments moves to put the Church in its rightful subordinate place:

Even as it remains preoccupied with its struggling economy, Ireland is in the midst of a profound transformation, as rapid as it is revolutionary: it is recalibrating its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, an institution that has permeated almost every aspect of life here for generations.

This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance — after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.

[S]o when the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Enda Kenny, unexpectedly took the floor in Parliament this summer to criticize the church, he was giving voice not just to his own pent-up feelings, but to those of a nation.

His remarks were a ringing declaration of the supremacy of state over church, in words of outrage and indignation that had never before been used publicly by an Irish leader.

The effect of his speech was instant and electric. “It was a seminal moment,” said Patsy McGarry, the religious affairs correspondent for The Irish Times. “No Irish prime minister has ever talked to the Catholic Church before in this fashion. The obsequiousness of the Irish state toward the Vatican is gone. The deference is gone.”

[H]is government’s feisty new tone has been met with widespread approval in a place that feels doubly betrayed: first by the abuse itself, and second by what many see as a cover-up by the church, compounded by the often opaque, legalistic language with which it defends itself.

The government has announced that it will introduce a package of new legislation to protect children from abuse and neglect, including a law — considered but rejected as too contentious by previous governments — that would make it mandatory to report evidence of crimes to the authorities. It has also established a group to examine how to remove half of the country’s Catholic primary schools from church control.

In a recent interview, Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said that Ireland had asserted its role as a “modern democracy.” No longer would the church enjoy its previous privileges and powers as in times past, when it, with the government’s collusion, “effectively dictated the social policy of the state,” he said.

He added: “The Catholic Church is perfectly entitled to have its own view and its own rule and to view matters according to its own light. But this is a republic. And there is one law.”

Again, such a development is long overdue in America where for far, far too long conservative Christians have endeavored to dictate social policy and legislation.

As DADT Dies, The Repeal of DOMA Becomes Critical

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As the letter set out above signed by senior U.S. Army brass indicates Don't Ask, Don't Tell is dead as of today. Yes, the hate merchants of the Christian Right and their groveling political whores in the Republican Party will continue to spread anti-gay lies and claim that the sky is falling, but I suspect that DADT's death will be permanent - at least unless and until the Christianists achieve their goal of overthrowing the U.S. Constitution and establishing a theocracy in this country. But DADT's death leaves much work still to be done, most particularly imposing a similar death on the falsely named federal Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA").

Like DADT, DOMA is all about religious based discrimination and the far right's agenda of granting Christianists beliefs special rights in the nation's laws that trample on the rights of non-Christianists and punish LGBT individuals in particular. Thus, even as celebrations take place around the country today - I plan on being at the event this evening at Waterside in Norfolk - GetEQUAL will be holding a “Day of Discontent” to call attention to the need for full federal equality for LGBT Americans. Because of DOMA and state law equivalents, same sex couples continue to be treated like garbage by their state and federal governments. A Huffington Post column summarizes the rampant discrimination that remains after today's momentous death of DADT:

"The protests and rallies are meant to be the next chapter," Heather Cronk, managing director for GetEQUAL, told The Huffington Post. . . . The end of DADT will mean little to gays and lesbians still living in conservative regions of the country, she told HuffPost.

Gays and lesbians in the military will be able to come out of the closet Tuesday but will still be denied benefits and protections accorded to their straight, married counterparts because of the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA defines marriage for federal purposes as between one man and one woman and allows states normally bound to recognize marriages performed in other states to ignore the validity of those between same-sex couples.

The protests also will focus on workplace bias against gays, immigration laws that keep gay bi-national couples apart and other regulatory areas where discrimination persists.

Heather is correct - there is much work still to be done and the "family values" hate groups and Christian Taliban will fight tooth and claw to retain the special rights they currently enjoy in terms of perverting the nation's laws to punish those who do not live in accordance with their hate and fear based religious dogma.

More Monday Male Beauty

U.K. Tories Back Full Marriage Equality

In yet another sign that so-called American conservatives and the GOP have ceased to be mainstream - indeed, as Andrew Sullivan argues, the GOP is now "a religious movement with radically reactionary political objectives" - and are slipping further and further into a fringe mindset, the United Kingdom's conservative government (Prime minister Cameron is pictured at right) has come out in support of fully marriage equality for same sex couples. The Independent looks at this development which few would have expected just a few years ago. It shows how conservatism does not require one reject medical and scientific knowledge out of hand in a desperate attempt to inflict punishment on those who do not submit to a particular set of religious beliefs. Here are highlights from the Independent article:

Lib Dem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone today declared herself "delighted" to announce the Government's move to legislate for same-sex marriages before the next general election.

Addressing the opening day of her party's autumn conference in Birmingham, she spoke passionately about the need to reject prejudice and discrimination, and support the cause of women's equal rights and persecuted minorities across the world.

To rounds of applause, she said: "I am delighted to announce today that in March this Government will bring in a formal consultation on how to implement equal civil marriage for same-sex couples.

She added: "Civil partnerships were a very welcome first step, but as our constitution states, this party rejects prejudice and discrimination in all its forms. And I believe that to deny one group of people the same opportunities offered to another, is not only discrimination, it is simply not fair."

The Boston Globe was quick (and justified) to call out the GOP and its increasingly irrational and unjustified prejudice against same sex couples in the USA:

Today’s announcement that the Conservative government in Britain will push legislation to legalize same-sex marriage may shake up politics in the United Kingdom. But for the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to reverse itself on the issue may have just as significant an effect on politics in the United States.

The British Conservative Party has long been a model for Republicans; GOP presidential candidates invariably cite Churchill and Thatcher as heroes for articulating the fundamental tenets of conservatism. . . . . Now Cameron has decided that same-sex marriage fits just fine with his party’s cherished conservative values. The question is, will the reversal force Republicans into rethinking their position on gay marriage — or for that matter, their longstanding relationship with the Conservative Party?

While both parties share much in common, a key difference is that social conservatives — a strong contingent in the US — are not a factor in British politics. Same-sex marriage remains taboo to Christian conservatives, a constituencies that no GOP contender wants to alienate.

There are a few rumblings from some more libertarian-leaning conservatives in the US that it might be time for the party to moderate its opposition to same-sex marriage. GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, has stated that he supports civil unions, which are still anathema to the religious right.

[T]he shift by the British Conservatives to support same-sex marriage probably won’t lead to a sudden change of heart in the GOP. But their reversal shows how the political momentum for same-sex marriage is growing in the Western world, and signals that the Republican Party’s stance is growing increasingly out of step with even its closest ideological peers.

Anticipation of DADT Repeal Eve

In this region with its huge military presence there is a palpable sense of anticipation and excitement in the LGBT community on the eve of Don't Ask, Don't Tells repeal effective at 12:01AM tomorrow. There continues to be conjecture as to how many gays and lesbians now serving in the nation's military will come out tomorrow or in the near future. As reported by the New York Times, a survey by OutServe suggests that nearly 40 percent of the respondents plan on coming out to some people in the military after tomorrow - 13 percent said they expect to come out to "everyone" tomorrow. The Times also reports that soon after the Sept. 20 expiration of the ban - some sources in the LGBT blogging community say at 12:01 AM tomorrow - OutServe plans to release “Our Time: Breaking the Silence of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” a collection of first-person essays about gay life in the military with all the contributors will use their real names. Here are some other interesting highlights from the Times coverage on the OutServe survey:

The survey seemed to confirm something advocates for ending the ban have long asserted: that most gay or lesbian troops — more than three-quarters, according to the survey — have been “out” to at least some of their fellow service members.

Eighty-two percent of the respondents were men; about 18 percent were women. About a third were junior enlisted; another third were non-commissioned officers; and just under 30 percent were officers.

Nearly one in five said they would be married if gay marriage were allowed in their state — raising a significant point of consideration for the Pentagon, which will have to grapple with what kinds of benefits it can give to same-sex spouses of service members after the law ends.

Only three percent said they would bring complaints to their chaplain. Similarly, two-thirds said they considered their chaplain “neither helpful nor harmful” in meeting their spiritual needs, while only about one in five considered their chaplain either extremely or moderately helpful.

As I have noted before, over time, I believe that DADT repeal will have a huge impact on this region both in terms of the LGBT community itself and in terms of opening eyes and minds in the straight community notwithstanding the efforts that Christianists will likely make to claim the world is ending (I suspect their bigoted forebears acted exactly the same way when blacks were integrated into the military). As to how the military expects things to play out after tomorrow, a Stars and Stripes article suggests that it will be "business as usual" with no issues as DADT goes onto the garbage heap. Here are some excerpts:

The military’s controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” law ends Tuesday, allowing openly gay troops to serve for the first time and marking one of the most dramatic personnel changes in U.S. military history.

But despite the significance, defense officials have spent weeks downplaying the actual impact of the change, insisting that for gay and straight troops the repeal will still mean business as usual.

Pentagon leaders and the White House on Tuesday will acknowledge the end of the 18-year-old law — the basis for the dismissal of roughly 14,000 gay servicemembers — and last year’s contentious debate repealing it.

But, other than a few news conferences, no formal military events or instructions are planned. Pentagon officials said Monday that 2.25 million troops have completed training briefings on the rule changes since last spring, and no new sessions or advisories are expected after repeal.

Last week, AFRICOM Commander Gen. Carter Ham, who co-chaired a military study on implementing a “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal, said he saw the actual end date of the law as a non-issue. “My hope, my expectation, my belief is that it will be pretty inconsequential.”

For my many friends and clients in the U.S. military, tomorrow will allow them to indulge in a huge sigh of relief and take a cloud of constant dread off of their shoulders. Happily, they and their partners will be able to lead much more normal lives. I am so very, very happy for them and for the USA as it throws aside at least this one element of religious based bigotry.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

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