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DADT: Don’t Ask Is Dead, But Not Second-Class Status Of Gays In Military

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“The only thing the repeal of DADT changes is that LGB folks can now fight and possibly die for this country. It does not allow for partner benefits if that service member is killed in action. It does not allow for housing expenses or housing, for that matter, for same-sex couples. It does not provide piece of mind that an LGB service member will not be discriminated against because there is no discrimination policy included. It does not provide a separation allowance for same-sex couples. It does not provide funding or country clearance for same-sex partners. It does not even allow transgender people to serve [openly.] And, if you reenlist after you were discharged for being gay, there is no guarantee that you will be given the same job. You will go where the military needs you – if they need you.”

–Beth Brooker, a board member of Hampton Roads Pride and the State Lead for GetEQUAL VA.

Just as parallels may be drawn between our New Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Movement which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 leading to the desegregation of civilians in the United States, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is analogous to the desegregation of our armed forces.

In January, 1776, because of manpower shortages, George Washington lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Continental Army. All-black units were formed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts; many were slaves promised freedom for serving in lieu of their masters.

In February, 1946 African-American World War II veteran Isaac Woodard was attacked and blinded by policemen in Aiken, South Carolina.

In July, 1946 Two African-American veterans and their wives were taken from their car near Monroe, Georgia, by a white mob and shot to death; their bodies were found to contain 60 bullets.

In January, 1948 President Truman decided to end segregation in the armed forces and the civil service through administrative action (executive order) rather than through legislation.

In October, 1953, the Army announced that 95% of African-American soldiers were serving in integrated units.

The Articles of War of 1916 explicitly prohibited homosexuality in the U.S. military, but the ban wasn’t enforced until World War II. (However thousands of lesbians were allowed to serve; asking women about their sexuality violated the behavior standards of the times.)

On Oct. 25, 1992 Petty Officer Third Class Allen R. Schindler, 22, was battered to death against the fixtures of a public toilet in a park near the naval base at Sasebo, Japan. He was so disfigured that his mother said she was able to recognize him only by the tattoos on his arms. The Navy said that his skull was battered, most of his ribs were broken and his penis was cut off.

On July 6, 1999 Private First Class Barry Winchell, 21, was bludgeoned to death at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after he was suspected of being gay.

On June 30, 2009 Gay Seaman August Provost, 29, of Houston was shot multiple times as he stood guard at Camp Pendleton.

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign promise to lift the ban led to the passage of The Military Personnel Eligibility Act of 1993, also known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The Pentagon agreed to stop asking about sexuality, but it never agreed to stop investigating whether those serving were gay. Since 1994 almost 14,000 service members have been dismissed because of their sexual orientation.

On January 27th, 2010 President Barak Obama declared in his State of the Union address that he’d work to “finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.”

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ends today, but the fruits of our victory are bittersweet. Lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women will still be treated as second class citizens; transgender men and women must still serve in secrecy as they have for centuries in armies worldwide.

The chronicles of history are populated with second class citizens. Second class citizens built the monuments, worked the fields, prepared the food, fought the wars, and birthed the children. The world was filled with second class citizens; economies were based on them. Little has changed in the roughly 5000 years of the written word.

But the yearning for equality, the freedom to love, also echoes through those chronicles. An overwhelming desire to determine our own destiny seems to be inherent in our humanity. Heroes are forged from the chains of servitude. A belief in one’s own dignity can lead to martyrdom. Lovers will scale walls and climb mountains to be with their beloved. Neither the threat of imprisonment nor the possibility of death deters. Having taken a breath of freedom, men and women want to fill their lungs with it. Tasting the sweetness of the crumbs of equality, we crave the entire cake.

Although our country was founded on the assertion “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” our constitution, although since amended, still enshrines the concept that some citizens are worth more than others. Some people literally counted less and some didn’t count at all. The “pursuit of happiness” by some was determined by the whims of others. To put it in Orwellian terms – all men are created equal but some men are created more equal than others.

We are now in the midst of a New Civil Rights Movement. What was once called The Gay Movement and then The Gay and Lesbian Movement became the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Movement and then The LGBT Movement. But now our movement is no longer Gay. Over time our alphabet soup of diversity has added more letters and the A for allies is perhaps the one that will determine its success.

Bayard Rustin, the openly gay African-American who taught Martin Luther King, Jr. about Gandhian non-violence and orchestrated the 1963 march that gave Dr. King the platform to vocalize his Dream, said in 1986, “Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new “niggers” are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.”

Many in the African-American Community disapprove of this equation of our movement with their struggle for dignity and equality. They argue because we were not enslaved or separated from our families or beaten or lynched or subjected to systematic rape, the comparison somehow demeans their Civil Rights Movement.

The enslavement of our spirit is not the same as the bondage of their ancestors, but for our homeless queer teens, disowned by their families, for our women subjected to ‘corrective’ rape, for our mothers whose bullied gay children commit suicide or whose sons were bludgeoned or repeatedly shot, for our transgender women who are beaten or murdered, the differences seem few.

No, our New Civil Rights Movement is not exactly the same, but there is no hierarchy to oppression. We are born, we queer sons and daughters, to mostly heterosexual parents. We are disparate from conception, raised as strangers in a strange land, sometimes embraced, sometimes cast out.

Yes, today we celebrate the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And tomorrow the LGBT men and women who serve our country will still be treated as second class citizens. Will you speak up for them?

(Image: Sean Carlson, equalityphotography.com)

Stuart Wilber lives in Seattle with his partner and cat. Equality continues to elude them.

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News

Trump Team Pushing ‘Utter Propaganda’ on Deportations to Create ‘Climate of Fear’: Experts

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January 24, 2025

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The Trump administration’s long-promised “largest mass deportation operation” in U.S. history, which was announced to begin “on day one,” has so far resulted in what some experts and immigration advocates suggest are an average number to mild increase in arrests and deportations. Activists, experts, and journalists are working to provide context to the White House’s claims of its own effectiveness.

“The White House said immigration agents have arrested 538 undocumented immigrants with criminal records and deported ‘hundreds’ more,” The Washington Post reported Friday. “Those numbers, if accurate, would be relatively modest for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge operations — a possible indication that the Trump administration’s show of force has so far outpaced the government’s capacity to deliver on the president’s lofty goals.”

Ahead of his inauguration on Monday, the media was awash with reports that President Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would start Tuesday, the day after he was sworn into office, and one day after it was originally supposed to. Chicago was identified in reports as the first city to be targeted by Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities.

“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan said, according to the BBC. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines.”

RELATED: ‘Hunting Grounds’: Trump Cancels Biden Ban on ICE Arrests at Schools, Churches, Hospitals

But Homan, who served as acting director of ICE during Trump’s first administration, then served up a curious claim: “Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.” He went on to suggest that the “leaked” Chicago details could be putting the safety of federal agents at risk.

“What was leaked in Chicago was more specific, what was happening, and that raises officer safety concern,” Homan said, according to The Hill.

Homan on Fox News had promised a “big raid” across the country, BBC had reported, and “has previously said Chicago will be ‘ground zero’ for the mass deportations.”

The mass arrests and deportations, despite appearing to be average, were heralded by the media.

Wednesday night, Fox News host Jesse Watters posted video to his Facebook page, declaring, “FOX NEWS ALERT: The largest mass deportation operation in American history is underway, and Primetime has exclusive photos of ICE’s first arrests.”

READ MORE: ‘Not Good’: Trump Proposes ‘Getting Rid of’ FEMA, Conditioning California Aid on Voter ID

Numerous media outlets blared that the Trump administration on Thursday arrested 538 undocumented immigrants.

And yet, according to a former Capitol Hill staffer, President Joe Biden’s average was often higher.

The White House on Friday posted an image to social media, declaring, “Deportation Flights Have Begun.”

Immigration experts, activists, and journalists pushed back hard.

“Deportation flights were taking place under Biden too. What’s new is the military aircraft,” noted The Bulwark’s Sam Stein. CNN’s Brian Stelter added, “Also new: The PR strategy.”

PR appears to be a major focus.

The Washington Examiner’s DHS reporter, Anna Giaritelli, quickly corrected the record on the White House’s above social media post: “DHS official authorized to speak with media said this is not a deportation flight — these are roughly 80 Guatemalans who were arrested AT the southern border recently and are being REPATRIATED. That is legally not a deportation.”

Immigration activist Thomas Cartwright, who, according to The Washington Post “tracks ICE deportations for the immigrant advocacy group Witness at the Border,” pointed to this data, and also challenged the White House’s narrative.

“Theater of the absurd,” he charged. “The only thing new about this is subjecting people to transport on a cargo plane rather than charter and the LOWER number of people on the plane – 75-80 compared to the average for ICE deportation flights to Guatemala of 125. In 2024 there were 508 deportation flights to Guatemala and in 2020 – 2023: 247, 184, 369, and 470, respectively. The 508 in 2024 represents just under an average of 10 deportation flights per week to Guatemala. Counting this flight there have been only 5 this week through Thursday.”

Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, also responded to the White House’s post: “This is utter propaganda and you have to make sure not to fall for it. There were dozens of deportation flights every single week over the last year and before that. Deportation flights never stopped. If they try to claim otherwise, they are lying to the American people.”

Reichlin-Melnick also blasted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in response to another of her posts on immigration. “Are these people seriously trying to suggest the deportation flights have not already been going on? They’re lying to you. The Biden administration had already ramped up deportations from the border to a higher level than it was under the Trump admin.”

And pointing to Cartwright’s data, he noted, “In 2024, ICE carried out an average of 4.27 deportation flights per day (which includes weekends and holidays) The normal weekday total was above 6 deportation flights a day, per @thcartwright. Deportation flights never stopped. This is propaganda.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times’ Hamed Aleaziz on Friday afternoon told MSNBC that the Trump administration is really going “on the offensive when it comes to putting out pictures of ICE deportations from the White House Twitter account, from Tom Holman being on several new spots, talking about deportations, it is front and center. And I think it’s an effort to show that President Trump is fulfilling this promise of mass deportations.”

He says their goal is they “want people to be uncomfortable. They want there to be a climate of fear. And ultimately, maybe people will decide that they want to leave this country voluntarily?”

See the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Not Good’: Trump Proposes ‘Getting Rid of’ FEMA, Conditioning California Aid on Voter ID

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January 24, 2025

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President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency during a visit to Hurricane Helene-damaged parts of North Carolina on Friday, announcing he is planning on reforming or “getting rid of FEMA,” and proposed an unprecedented move to condition disaster relief on the passage of a voter ID law by California’s lawmakers, “as a start.” Trump’s trip, which will include travel to California later Friday, appears designed to target the emergency management agency, which he has been criticizing for months.

In what appeared to be scripted remarks, Trump later elaborated that he would “sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think frankly, FEMA’s not good. I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go and, uh, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time.”

“Calling FEMA and then FEMA gets here and they don’t know the area,” Trump claimed. “They’ve never been to the area and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about, they wanna bring people that aren’t as good as the people you already have,” he alleged.

“FEMA turned out to be a a disaster. And you could go back a long way, you could go back to Louisiana, you could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. And it turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. It just complicates it. I think we’re gonna recommend that FEMA go away. And we pay directly and we pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix it.”

RELATED: Is Trump Using Project 2025 to Eliminate FEMA?

In his wide-ranging remarks, President Trump also claimed that “rather than going through FEMA,” disaster relief aid to California and North Carolina “will go through us,” meaning, through his administration. FEMA is a federal government agency under the wide umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The president nominates the HHS Secretary, a cabinet level official, and the FEMA administrator.

And Trump appeared to say that he will assign Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley to manage financial aid to North Carolina, removing FEMA from the state.

“Trump also said FEMA would not be involved in further relief efforts and instead suggested that Whatley, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein (D), and a trio of Republican House members would be working with the White House directly because the agency ‘hasn’t done the job,'” The Independent reported.

“I wanna see two things in Los Angeles,” Trump also told reporters late Friday morning, “voter ID so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state. Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California ever has ever seen.”

“I want the water to come down and come down to Los Angeles and also go out to all the farm land that’s barren and dry,” Trump claimed. This week the President appeared to suggest that water runs only north to south.

READ MORE: Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

“So, I want two things,” Trump repeated, “I want voter ID for the people of California. They all want it. Right now you have no, you don’t have voter ID. People want to have to voter identification. You wanna have proof of citizenship. Ideally, you have one-day voting, but I just want voter ID to start, and I want the water to be released, and they’re gonna get a lot of help from the U.S.”

Trump later responded to a reporter’s question about his remarks on ending FEMA, calling the agency “a very big disappointment” that costs “a tremendous amount of money.” He alleged, “they end up in arguments if they’re fighting, all the time over who does what, it’s just it’s just not a good system.”

“I think it’s, I think when there’s a, uh, when there’s a problem with the state, I think that that problem should be taken care of by the state. That’s what we have states for. They take care of problems, and a government can handle something very quickly,” Trump said, appearing to not mention the scope of FEMA’s actions, responsibilities, and resources.

Jordan Weissmann, reporter for Yahoo Finance covering federal agencies, offers this explanation on California water: “The water issue Trump is fixated on doesn’t really have anything to do with the wildfires. It’s a fight between Central Valley farmers and Northern California farmers and environmentalists about who gets more fresh water.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s J6 Pardons Are ‘High Crime’ and ‘Abuse of Power’ Legal Expert Says

 

Image: Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Franklin Graham in North Carolina Friday, via Reuters

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Danish MP Follows Profane Message to Trump With Warning to Greenlanders on US Civil Rights

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January 24, 2025

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President Donald Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark isn’t going over well with some Danes, including one of Denmark’s politicians who used vulgarity to express his opposition earlier this week, and is now citing a century-long historical record to issue a warning to Greenlanders on America’s refusal to grant full voting rights to its citizens in U.S. territories.

Anders Vistisen, a Danish Member of the European Parliament, reminded Trump earlier this week that “Greenland has been part of the Danish Kingdom for 800 years,” and “is not for sale.”

“Let me put it in words you might understand: Mr. Trump. f*** off,” Vistisen said.

Thursday night on CNN, Vistisen, a member of a right wing populist party, expanded his battle against Trump’s aspiration to annex Greenland.

READ MORE: Trump’s J6 Pardons Are ‘High Crime’ and ‘Abuse of Power’ Legal Expert Says

Addressing what he called the “argument that America can make a great deal,” an apparent reference to Donald Trump, Vistisen said, “we actually have some historical precedence for this. A hundred years ago we sold you what you call the U.S. Virgin Islands. Today, that territory still doesn’t have voting rights for your presidential elections.”

“That place doesn’t have a voting member of your parliament, the Congress — or the House of Representatives, and the Senate, and when I visited, when we had the hundred years commemoration, there was not a great lot of enthusiasm about the way the U.S. is handling that.”

“So I think if the Greenlandic people are looking carefully at this and they are looking on the U.S. overseas territories,” Vistisen continued, “looking at how Indigenous people are treated in the U.S., it’s very hard to make a compelling argument that they will have a better deal from the United States than what they have within the Danish realm, the kingdom of Denmark, where they have full voting rights in the Danish parliament are actually are overrepresented, and as you clearly stated, they have a very beneficial agreement, economically with Denmark.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a former Bush 43 White House speechwriter, responded to Vistisen’s remarks.

“In 1917, Denmark (legally neutral but sympathetic to the Allies) sold the [Virgin] islands to the USA to prevent Germany from seizing them for a submarine base. Also, the islands were economically desperate, and war-isolated Denmark could not aid them. As part of the deal, the US guaranteed Danish sovereignty over Greenland. Another reason that seizing Greenland would be an act of US bad faith,” Frum wrote.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Is Trump Using Project 2025 to Eliminate FEMA?

 

Image by Elekes Andor via Wikimedia Commons and a CC license

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