A federal judge in Massachusetts dismissed today a constitutional challenge to the U.S. military’s ban on service by men and women who are openly gay. The decision by District Judge George A. O’Toole, Jr., is the second in a month throwing out suits attacking the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy enacted by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1993.

Kuwait veteran Thomas Cook, discharged by the Army in 2004 after coming out, was the lead plaintiff in the suit dismissed today by a federal judge in Massachusetts.

The suit was brought by gay veterans of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, who were represented by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group that advocates repeal of the military’s gay ban, as well as the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr.

“We are disappointed in the court’s decision, and are reviewing all possible responses,” said C. Dixon Osburn, SLDN’s executive director, in a statement. “We continue to believe the military’s ban is un-American and unconstitutional.” (source)

Not much to say about this, except.....

Emotional Viewpoint
I believe that every single gay and lesbian person in the U.S. Military should come out of the closet right now! You want to challenge the policy? Put the policy on trial in a real court room - the barracks, the battle field, the Pentagon. Bring the fight to them.

When everyone comes out, they will be faced with a dilemma - either stop this stupid and expensive policy, or begin the discharges of a hundred thousand (and I’m being conservative) gay men and women from the U.S. Military.

If the military is so damned concerned about gay people being in the military, fine. Let the straight people go to battle and die for our country, because it’s obvious that our country doesn’t care about us.

Practical Viewpoint
If you are in the barracks, and the people around you are so insecure about the idea of a man looking at their ass when they are getting dressed, or looking at their “pee pee” in the shower, then you don’t want to be there.

If you are on the battle field, and the people around you are so insecure about the idea of a man looking at their ass when they are getting dressed, or looking at their “pee pee” in the shower, and would just as soon put a bullet in your back and called it “friendly fire” just to get rid of you, then you don’t want to be there.

But I give more credit to our troops in the field than that. I believe that 98% of them don’t give a rats ass what people are into, as long as you are competent and know how to do your job (stay alive and watch their back so they don’t get killed).

Every single soldier that I have talked to in our current war in Iraq have no problem with gays serving and have admitted that there are a number of openly gay men serving along side them, and everyone in the unit knows they are gay. The problem comes when that information sometimes works it’s way up the chain and a competent soldier is yanked from the ranks and discharged.

This has more to do with Congress than the military at this point in time. At the time the policy was put into place in 1993, that could not be said. But the military has changed and attitudes have changed within the ranks over the years, precisely because of increased visibility of the gay community.

The same cannot be said for our government, who is largely holding on to it’s homophobic feelings for dear life. This is a problem in the United States, and while we hold on to this archaic policy, it’s interesting to note that other countries have long since lifted these bans for military service; Israel, Canada, England, France, just to name a few.

“Real Life” Viewpoint
This topic is so old. Year after year I read of these discharges of highly qualified individuals, many of whom are in extremely technical positions. This training is expensive and we all pay for it. Yet, we are willing to allow the government to just discard this expertise without a whim.

I care about the soldiers this effects, but I guess my advice to them would be this:

“I know you love your country and you want to serve. You have to decide if your own personal integrity is that important to you. You have to decide if you can lie and make up stories about ‘your girlfriend’ every time the subject of ‘what did you do Saturday night’ comes up. But mostly, you have to decide if it’s worth it to go through all of that, only to be discarded like yesterdays trash, if they find out that you are gay, because they will throw you away and they won’t think twice about it.”

Gov. Ernie Fletcher and other politicians talk a lot about luring businesses to Kentucky, but critics cite extensive research that suggests anti-gay actions by Fletcher and state lawmakers may drive companies elsewhere.

Detractors contend that Fletcher’s April 11 move to strip discrimination protections from homosexual employees and the General Assembly’s decision to provide $11 million to a private university that expelled a gay student will make Kentucky seem unsavory to many companies that officials hope to attract and retain.

“Bigotry is bad for business and having a governor who is obviously bigoted is fundamentally incompatible with business,” said Alan Hawse of Lexington, vice president of information technology for California-based Cypress Semiconductor.

Hawse, who oversees about 40 highly paid employees in downtown Lexington and another 175 in California, Minnesota, the Philippines and elsewhere, said the state’s already lackluster image has been further tarnished by recent events.

“We go from a backwater state trying to attract business to a backwater, bigoted state trying to attract business,” Hawse said Friday. (source)

I believe in democracy.

But I’ve come to realize that democracy doesn’t always have a nice face to it. It’s kind of like free speech. In the United States, we supposedly have the freedom to speak our mind. If we do, however, your remarks can have consequences to them. Some remarks can land you in jail. Others may make you look like a hero to some, while making you look less than stellar to others.

For all it’s shortcomings, I believe in democracy. True democracy means that people have the freedom to make their own choices. True democracy is free from personal or political agendas. True democracy stands on it’s own merits - good or bad.

So when the Boy Scouts of America wants to exclude gay students or atheists from it’s midst, who am I to question them? They, as a private organization, have the right to do that. We can call it “bigotry”. They call it “personal expression” or “upholding their moral values”. The Supreme Court has deemed them to be a “private organization” and can therefore pretty much do what they want in terms of membership.

But I have a right to call that “bigoted” and “homophobic”. That’s my free speech right. I also have a right to make others aware of what the organization is doing and that when you support them or put your kid into that organization, you are supporting bigotry along with the lesson to your child that bigotry is just fine and dandy. The same is true about any other entity who practices this - say, a state.

While I don’t like many of these rulings that are coming out across the country, I do realize that this is part of democracy. There is nothing wrong with a state completely stripping away the rights of a certain class of citizens, if that’s what they want to do. The Constitution, however, may have a different opinion on that, but I doubt that our current Supreme Court would have much issue with it. My bet is that the current Supreme Court will brush aside the Fourteenth Amendment in favor of letting the states make their own decisions around the issue of liberties and rights of gay citizens. This makes sense. Why stir the pot of controversy when it still is not controversial to discriminate against the one group (gay citizens) left in America where discrimination is still quite acceptable?

But aside from constitutional considerations and how the Supreme Court may choose to rule, a state can choose to be homophobic or racist, if it wants.

There will be a price to be paid for that however. The State of Kentucky will suffer the cost of bigotry, and they should. Depending on the values of their citizenry, it may be an acceptable price for them to pay. What they really should be thinking about is the kind of place they want their state to be - one of inclusion and harmony - or one of exclusion and intolerance. Both are choices that they have to make.

So while I don’t like what Virginia is about to do next November, or what is brewing in Ohio, or Idaho, or what Kentucky is thinking about, they should go ahead and be every bit as hateful as they want to be. That is democracy. And sometimes, it is necessary to show the ugliness of something before change can take place (this is where I would normally go into my speech about how most people are “basically good”, if I still believed that).

But don’t expect the world and the rest of the country to embrace the bigotry and intolerance a state exhibits, because slowly AND surely, the country is changing it’s attitude on many things. Over time, I’m sure this country will go the way of inclusion and tolerance because that is the way the rest of the world is going - from gay marriage, to allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in the military, workplace antidiscrimination laws at the national level, and on and on. When that happens, states such as Idaho, Kansas, Virginia, and Kentucky will be left swinging in the wind; financially, competitively, and socially.

They deserve it, but hey, that’s democracy.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that escalating violence in Iraq demonstrates that the Iraqi population is now capable of waging the Iraq war without outside military aid, and pronounced the American mission there “a complete success.”

“Over the last month, the Iraqis have been fighting like you wouldn’t believe,” said Rumsfeld in a press conference at the Pentagon. “New Iraqis are joining the war every day--so many, in fact, that we don’t know where they all came from. It’s almost as if they came out of nowhere.”

“The scope and intensity of the combat in Iraq is such that I believe the presence of American forces in the country will no longer be required to help the Iraqi people plummet into meaningless violence,” Rumsfeld added. (source) (highlighting, my own)

It’s called “civil war”, moron. Where in the hell do they come up with morons like this?

And, I thought that our objective for going to Iraq was to “stop terrorism”, not start a war continuously fueled by religious factions. Now that that’s happened, we can come home? Gee, and just in time for the November elections.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington has challenged the dismissal of a decorated Major and flight nurse in the U.S. Air Force Reserves for engaging in “homosexual conduct.” The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seeks to forbid Major Margaret Witt’s discharge.

“Major Margaret Witt has been an exemplary member of the military with a distinguished record of service. To discharge her simply because of her sexual orientation is unfair and does not make our military stronger,” said ACLU of Washington Executive Director Kathleen Taylor.

The lawsuit seeks to stop the Air Force from discharging Major Witt or from otherwise hampering her military career. The ACLU of Washington argues that Witt’s discharge would violate her right to engage in private activities without government interference. The military has provided no evidence that her sexual orientation or conduct has caused a problem in the performance of her military duties. To the contrary, the ACLU of Washington is submitting declarations from military colleagues that her forced absence is harmful to her unit’s morale. (source)

So we lose another qualified military officer to the stupid and archaic Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

It’s becoming more difficult for me to support the military at all anymore. I know I’m going to get hate mail for this attitude, but look at the facts. They just don’t get it anymore. The would rather kick someone out like Major Witt, than to admit that their policies for dealing with Iraq have failed.

They would rather kick someone out like Major Witt for what she does in private, than to address the problem that Donald Rumsfeld has failed at his job. He’s the one we should be looking at to let go. And while we are at it, we have a failed Presidency and Congress isn’t looking so good either these days.

And the sad part of it is, the military dismisses at least one person a day for being gay, and most of these dismissals are hitting career soldiers and those with extensive training. This is yet one more thing that the U.S. taxpayers will have to pick up the tab for. You don’t really think that there’s zero cost to letting that kind of expertise just walk out the door, do you?

It’s time for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell TO GO!!!

As of today, the job approval rate for Congress is....

Ready for a change?

I spotted this billboard and was really stunned by it. It is exactly how I feel about the state of my country right now.

Study it carefully. Notice the $$$ coming out of our beloved President as he runs our country into the ground with debt.

And the words from our national anthem. And the tattered flag flying high over the remains of... people.

But at least “our flag was still there”, right? So what does that mean? We won? Is that how it works?

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Congress is spending a record $29 billion this year on thousands of lawmakers’ special projects, including a teapot museum in North Carolina and a boxing club in Nevada, according to a report on wasteful government spending.

Lawmakers increased spending by more than 6 percent from last year to pay for almost 10,000 special projects for their home districts, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based group that seeks to eliminate inefficiency in government.

The group cited $500,000 being spent on the teapot museum and $100,000 on the boxing club as being particularly egregious wastes of public money and deserving of derisive “oinker” awards. (source)

Damn. Teapots are expensive.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller. [...]

Libby is asking for voluminous amounts of classified information from the government in order to defend himself against five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the Plame affair.

He is accused of making false statements about how he learned of Plame’s CIA employment and what he told reporters about it.

Her CIA status was publicly disclosed eight days after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction. (source) - emphasis my own

Uh oh. Now what?

So, the President ordered that a CIA agent be “outed” because he was pissed off because someone dared to question his reasons for going into Iraq? Isn’t it a crime to leak classified information, even if you are the President, even if you are pissed off?

Maybe this Congress changed that, or maybe they will “forgive” it this time, or maybe... elephants fly and the sky is purple?

Could happen.