Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Last night, NPR aired an interview with Representative Duncan Hunter (Republican, California) in which he expressed his view that the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy should not be repealed. My blood pressure rose with every arguement he made, until I was so angry that I found myself screaming at my car radio.

There are few things in life that get me worked up like the ongoing--and absolutely ludicrious--"debate" over gay rights. How is it possible that in a society that supposedly values freedom and equal rights for all that, we still have to "debate" whether or not gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders should be afforded the same basic rights as everyone else.

I swear, our society is only about one step away from burning people at the stake and forced genital mutilation.

When Rep. Hunter was asked why he believed the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy should stand, here's what he had to say:

...No, because I think that its bad for the cohesiveness and the unity of the military units, especially those that are in close combat, that are in close quarters in country right now. Its not the time to do it. I think its - the military is not civilian life. And I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there....I think that the majority of people in the military are they're young kids. They usually have more conservative families, more conservative backgrounds and I think that it would go against their principles and it would frankly make everybody a little bit uneasy to be in these close situations...

So...What you're saying Rep. Hunter is that the military is full of young, little rednecks and bigots?  Or maybe you're saying that straight, gay, bi, and transgender people can't share close bonds?
In the United States we pride ourselves on allowing equal rights for all people, yet here is a congressman who seems to believe that discriminatory policies are OK, who believes that homophobia is a valid "principle" that should be protected.

...Its like if you want to work for NPR, you don't go to work and on the first day say, hey, I want everybody to know that I'm gay.

If I remember correctly, we called this a "straw man" argument in my college debate class. No, there is no reason for a person to parade in to their place of employment with a marching band, wrapped in a feather boah, and carrying balloons and a big "I'm gay" sign, but GLBT people should not have to hide who they are. They should be able to openly refer to their "partners," just as straight men/women talk about their families with their coworkers. 

...You probably don't care one way or the other as long as they, you know, get their particular job done. I think the military is the same way. That's why don't ask, don't tell works...

Ok, I see. It's OK to be gay, just so long as you get your work done and don't tell anyone that you're gay.

(In response to a statement that other countries allow GLBTs to serve openly in the military)...The U.S. is not Canada and were not Great Britain and I would argue that we have a superior military and a much larger military than any other country. Thats why were kind of the world's security force.

GLBTs serve in the military now!!!!! They just aren't allowed to be open about it, and if they do, there are consequneces. Openly gay or not, these men and women who currently have to hide their sexual orientation are some of the very same trained soldiers that make our military "superior."

The pro-lifers are at it again

Pro-life activists are demanding that "health care reform must be abortion free," and the most conservative among them are outraged that the proposal includes funding for preventative birth control and sex education.

Apparently, if we don't tell our children about sex, they will stay pure, untainted virgins forever. And, birth control…well that’s just wrong. I mean, who are we to “play God”?

Once a year, pro-lifers descend upon our nation’s capital to “make their voices heard.” They carry signs with pictures of dead babies, which if you know anything about human development, depict babies that are developed well beyond the point at which you can legally have an abortion. They cause delays on Metro, jamming their signs into closing train doors and screaming their viewpoints in commuters’ faces. They litter the ground and vandalize the buildings with “life” stickers. They are by far the most obnoxious and forceful group of protesters I have encountered in D.C.

I find it quite ironic that so many supposed pro-lifers are against abortion but for the death penalty. (70% of republicans consider themselves “pro-life,” and 80% of republicans are for the death penalty.)

Also ironic is the fact that republicans claim to be against “Big Government” yet they are more than happy to let the government all up in my uterus

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I am pro-choice. This does not mean that I support abortion—I support a woman’s right to decide what she does with her own body.

That’s the beauty of pro-choice—there’s room for everyone. If you believe that abortion is murder, then you may chose not to have an abortion or to force your knocked-up teen to have her baby and give it up for adoption.

However, if you are a scared, pregnant woman who is not ready to care for a baby or a rape victim that was inseminated by your aggressor, well you can chose to terminate the pregnancy.
See that, pro-choice offers a win-win situation.

This one hit too close to home

On Wednesday morning, 39-year-old Stephen Tyrone Johns woke up and put on his uniform, carefully placing his hat and tightly lacing his boots. He probably rode the Metro to work that morning, with his mind occupied on the mundane details of his life--What do I have to do this weekend? What's for lunch in the cafeteria at work today? Should I switch to satelliet?

The Metro doors opened at Smithsonian Station and Johns stepped off. He entered the Holocaust Memorial Museum--1 1/2 blocks from where I work--and took his post at the front-door security checkpoint. It was a day just like any other. Except it wasn't.

Johns watched as tourists passed through the metal detectors and he searched their bags carefully following protocol. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Suddenly, around 1 p.m. a man walked through the front doors of the museum wielding a rifle. He opened fire in the crowded vestibule. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Five or six shots are fired, Johns has been shot. The wound is fatal. Just like that a man's life is over.

My recount of Johns' morning before the shooting is pure speculation, but the details of his tragic death are not. This man woke up and went to work, just like he would on any other day, except this time he didn't make it home.

The shooter was an 88-year-old anti-Semitic, white supremacist. He shot up the Holocaust Memorial Museum to show the world his hate for Jews. For my people. My family. Me.

Writings attributed to the gunman on the Internet say the Holocaust was a hoax and decry a Jewish conspiracy to "destroy the white gene pool." Reading these words make my mouth go dry, my head throb and my eyes fill with tears.

I have relatives who are Holocaust survivors and had relatives who were not so lucky. My great grandfather was believed to have been murdered by the Nazis. My grandfather Max spent his entire adulthood searching for answers, but his father's body was never found. My grandfather's brother, Bernard, can recount horrific tales of Jews being shot point-blank in the head by Nazi soldiers right in public. My great aunt Sarah almost died of starvation in a ghetto in Poland and narrowly escaped death by assuming a false identity.

To deny the Holocaust is to deny my family history and to devalue my loved ones' pain and suffering.

After this tragic event, this disgusting hate crime, I feel an array of dizzying emotions from anger and fear to guilt and a sense of responsibility.

I am angry at those who hold hate in their hearts and have no respect for the life.
I am afraid that something like this could happen "in my own backyard."
I feel guilty for all the times someone has used "Jew" as a derogatory term in front of me while I stood silent instead of standing up for myself and my people.
I feel a sense of responsibility to share my family's story, to let people know that the Holocaust was real. The people who died was real. The emotional scars left on the survivors and their families are real. I am real.

Reversing a trend

Earlier this week, Jasmine at An Experiment in Poverty, and I were talking about the sad fact that there are so many wonderful, beautiful and competent women who suffer from low self-esteem. Instead of going on a tirade about how fashion magazines teach little girls that you have to be thin and pretty to be liked and about the unspoken expectation that women be good mothers, wives, housekeepers and hostesses all while holding down 9-5 jobs, I have decided to tackle the problem head-on.

Each week, I am going to post a compliment to myself and a compliment to a friend.

I am competent. My life--like anyone's life--has been like a roller coaster ride, full of ups and downs. But, no matter what life throws my way, I can walk away a stronger person. I have made mistakes. It's only human. But, my mistakes do not make me any less of a person.

Lora (at Jakezilla) is someone I know I can always count on. If you need advice, talk to her. She will look at your problem objectively, without making you feel stupid for not being able to do so yourself.

I met Lora about a decade ago--we were both waitresses at an Irish bar in Philly. I don't remember much about the Lora I first met, except that she liked whiskey and making silly faces. We weren't great friends back then, but we kept in touch and grew closer over the years. I'm not sure what she saw in me, but I always liked Lora because she was didn't--and still doesn't --allow others to tell her how to live her life. She refuses to conform to society's definition of what a woman--a wife, a mother, a daughter, a professional--is supposed to be. Lora is just Lora, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Some kind of way

I consider myself an adventurous and open-minded person. My travels have taken me from Bolivia to Honduras and from Spain to Wales. I lived in Costa Rica for six months and spent a month-and-a-half volunteering at a nonprofit in Guatemala.

While there were times during these experiences that I thought "what the fuck am I thinking" (like when I found myself with no money, sleeping on a fruit barge floating through Lake Nicaragua, or when I was forced to find my way through a random, dusty town in Peru after protesters blocked the streets and threw rocks at my bus). But, I never had any real worries about my decisions.

This time it's different. I am leaving on Monday for a four-week trip to Israel and Jordan. I realized just how different this experience is going to be when I looked at photos from the Ammarin Bedouin Camp near Petra, Jordan that I plan to spend four nights at. Something about seeing the men, dressed in full Muslim-style, desert regalia, sitting on colorful mats under a tent in the middle of the desert made me feel some kind of way--maybe a pang of fear?

Whatever I felt made me come face-to-face with the fact that despite my open mind and free spirit, I am not above fearing people who are different than me and places that are unfamiliar.

When I traveled around Latin America, I had just spent six months living in Costa Rica, where I had been once before. I spoke fluent Spanish and had Hispanic friends.

I now realize how little I know about Muslim people. I have a friend in Philly who studies the Qur'an, and I have a couple of Muslim co-workers, but other than that I have no experience with people of this faith. I am not afraid of Muslims like so many people in the U.S. seem to be. What I am afraid of is my own ignorance. The fact that I felt any kind of hesitation about my upcoming trip made me feel horrible. My biggest fear is to become a brain-washed, over-consuming, intolerant "typical American."

It takes active work to keep an open mind and a free spirit. I vow that my exploration and desire to understand more about Islamic culture will not end when I return home at the end of March.

Reason to celebrate

Tomorrow is Jack's 30th birthday, and we have a lot to celebrate. Just last week, Jack started his career as an elementary school teacher. He is teaching 3'rd grade math at a school in north east Baltimore. It's still a title-1 school, but its a much more pleasant place than the school where he did his residency. Since he's started at the new place, I haven't heard any stories of little girls with gashes on their faces from their mother's diamond ring or of 12 foster children living in the backseat of a car.

I am really proud of Jack for how far he's come. When we first started dating, Jack was working as a customer service rep at Discover Card and thinking about taking classes at a community college. Now, five (or six, who's counting) years later, he holds a degree in psychology and has what I would consider to be a very important job.

The Baltimore City Public School system needs more teachers like Jack. He sees hope in these kids that so many have written off. Yet he knows that he can't help them all. He is both optimistic and realistic. I know he will be great.

Firsts

The first openly gay Episcopalian bishop, Gene Robinson, will lead the country in the first-ever nondenominational prayer to be given at the inauguration of the first black president of the United States.

In an interview on National Public Radio, Robinson said that his prayer will be to the "god of all creation," a term he picked from his days in Alcoholics Anonymous.

By selecting Robinson to lead the country in this prayer, the Obama administration is showing the world that it is possible for gays, lesbians, heteros, bisexuals, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Catholics, Baptists, Protestants, blacks, whites, etc. to peacefully coexist.

At a time when Jews across the world are being murdered while praying in synagogues; unarmed black men are being shot execution style by cops in Los Angeles; and employers are allowed to fire someone because of his/her sexuality, this demonstration of good will and acceptance offers a glimmer of hope.

Hip to the jive

So, Baltimore City is trying to make it illegal to sell cigars priced $2.50 and below. According to a report on NPR, "At these low prices and with fruity flavors these cigars are targeted to kids."

Kids? Try pot smokers. And, they're blunts. Not cigars.

Nobody--including kids--smokes these things, unless they've emptied out the tobacco to make room for a little sumin', sumin'.

Common knowledge, right?

Baltimore City lawmakers are either living in the clouds or they're afraid to admit knowing the truth.

Gay Marriage

Just when I finally felt like I could be proud of the U.S. population, citizens of California, Arizona and Florida go and eff it up.

When will gays be treated equally in our society? If the government tried to ban marriages between people based on race, religion, age, class, etc., there would be riots across the country.
We have affirmative action for racial minorities and women. Meanwhile, there is no law to specifically forbid firing someone for being gay. I have more than one gay friend who is afraid of admitting to being homosexual for fear of backlash from the community and repercussion at the workplace.

Laws against hate crimes protect criminal offenses committed against a person or property motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a racial group, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference or disability. Gender identity is not protected, because, apparently, beating cross-dressers with baseball bats isn’t a crime…law enforcement agencies don’t even bother keeping stats on these crimes. Just last year, President Bush rejected efforts to expand federal "hate crimes" laws to include sexual orientation.

I am proud that this country has finally progressed to a point where a black family can occupy the white house and a woman can be considered as a presidential nominee. Unfortunately, we have not come far enough to allow gays to be treated as equals.

My theory? People are scared to accept gays because they just might have to acknowledge their own homo-erotic thoughts. Get over it.

Election Day

In anticipation of the much-talked-about long lines at the polls, I prepared a thermos full of piping hot, motor-oil coffee, threw a banana in my purse—along with my crisp, new voter registration card—and bundled up in my black fleece pullover and royal blue gloves to make the three block walk to my polling place at 7:30 this morning.

Side note: I was supposed to have been at work at 7:30 a.m.—the original plan was to work until lunch time and hit the polls before the mad after-work rush. My plans changed when my alarm went off at 5:15 a.m., just two hours after I had gotten home from the Bassnectar show at Bedrock. I turned the screeching alarm off and went back to sleep for a couple of hours before dragging myself out of bed and to the polls.

Expecting hundreds of people to be waiting in a line wrapped around the Canton Middle School, my designated polling place, I was shocked at the silence on the streets. Just two small signs—one advocating slots and one supporting Obama—lined the chain link fence near the school’s entrance. I guess Maryland is so blue, that we don’t need pushy campaigners to persuade us to vote for their candidate. The dems know we belong to them, and the republicans consider us a lost cause.

I joined the line, which was spilling out just beyond the doors. There were maybe 25 people ahead of me. Some old timers were grumbling. I’m not sure what for. I was in and out in 15 minutes…barely even had a chance to sip my coffee, much less eat my banana.

I voted for Obama-Biden, like a good MD dem should. I said “yes” to slots and yes to early voting. I didn’t vote for the district court judges, because I know nothing about them. I figure no vote is better than uninformed voting. I also said “yes” to increased funding for schools, arts and culture.