Straight Veteran: “Let Gays Serve, Be Remembered With Open, Equal Pride”
Editor’s note:
This open letter was sent to me by a reader, James Fallis (photo.) He writes, “I am a retired US Marine, with over 17 years of service in Infantry, Artillery, Reconnaissance units, and have been personally decorated three times for meritorious service. I have served as a member of C company, 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion-2nd Marine Division, during the ground combat phase of Operation Desert Storm. I spent four years in the Mid-west Recruiting region as a Marine Corps Recruiter, and Recruiter Supervisor. I now work for a Services and Transportation consulting firm owned by a fellow veteran, and I currently live in Waukegan, Illinois with my wife of five years.”
We thank him for his service to his country, and to the better ideals of humanity.
To The American People:
“We hold these truths to be self evident…..” Among those who have served this nation, we’ve mostly asked for no thanks. Never have we sought, nor have we petitioned our countrymen for the pedestal upon which we may have been hastily placed.
We ask for no ribbons, no bumper stickers, or hero worship. We seek not the charade of adorned motorcycles, who roar to a funeral dirge. There is no glory after all in creating mythology around those who simply follow the order to crush the world under Caesar’s foot. The true heroes, to a man it is believed with almost universal agreement amongst the brothers and sisters, who create the living fraternity of battle, are the ones who never come home from war.
For them we ask that you remember this: for their remaining hope of a justified sacrifice we ask that you, our nation live up to the deeds for which we have abandoned to war the pleasant fiction of a normal life. We have chosen as free men and women, to serve, to sacrifice, and to surrender our lives to fate for the sake of our country. Honor this, and let our Gay Brothers and Sisters serve and be remembered with open and equal pride.
Let anyone who wishes to demean the honor of our Gay veterans by denying service to these men and women, remember three things:
1.)Â Â For those of you who choose to place a thin cotton flag on a small pine stick, on the graves of the veteran, remember that somewhere beneath you lies a Gay Man or Woman.
2.)Â Â For those of you who parade with flags adorned, two across, aligned and covered, realize that the one’s whose coffin you follow with your yellow banded notion of “guarding,” could be the body of one who knew love far beyond what the feeble institutions of the Church and State say it should be.
3.)Â Â For those among you who mask your reasonable doubt about our wars, with a fevered sense of self patriotism, know that among those who shoulder the burden of your misplaced pride, are the battle weary who at this very moment, cry for the company of another man or another woman. But alone they remain, gazing at star filled and silent desert night skies.
Lt. Dan Choi, who by coming out this past year has come to symbolize the ridiculous and dishonorable nature of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Choi is a Giant amongst men, and a soldier of virtue. Let him take his place with us with pride, openness, and honor. When I was younger I breathed in the long and saturated breaths of oil fire smoke, in America’s first war in the desert. At night, when the rounds hummed their high pitched whine over head, and when the thunder of fragmented blazing hot steel broke open the hearts of simple men, I did not ask who soldiers like Dan Choi lay with. I only asked that they carried the moment with me.
The time has come now for the Nation we love to live up to the sacrifices we have made. Put away your ribbons, your bows, and your car magnets. Leave your rallies for another time. Take off your lapel pins, and recycle their thin metal for some other good. Songs and symbols of a confused sense of pride have no place in today’s war. If, but only if the people those symbols were made to honor are treated as equal among men and women of honor.
It is time for you to stand tall and remember out loud, the service and tragic death of the Gay veteran. Their deeds have shown that they have never surrendered themselves or any free persons to the legions of intolerance, fear, hate, and oppression. Neither should any of you.
— James Fallis
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President Donald Trump concluded his executive time Friday morning with a statement announcing he would end the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and laid out his requirements for a deal with Iran, before declaring, “I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination.”
After a two-hour meeting with his advisors, Trump left without making a decision.
“It was not clear why Mr. Trump did not reach a decision,” The New York Times reports.
“In recent days, the sides have exchanged fire, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened a return to full-scale war,” the Times added.
Among Trump’s demands were that the Strait be reopened “immediately,” with no tolls imposed on traffic, and all water mines removed — although he noted, “we have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers.”
“Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of ‘heading home!’ Say hello to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President,” he wrote. Trump added: “No money will be exchanged, until further notice.”
READ MORE: Judge: Trump Cannot Rename Kennedy Center
Were an agreement to be reached, the Times noted, “it could give Mr. Trump an off-ramp from a war that has driven up oil prices and grown deeply unpopular at home. It could also eventually allow Iran to regain access to frozen overseas assets and provide a route for Tehran to get billions of dollars of oil revenue flowing again.”
Even if the Strait reopened immediately, experts warn, replacing the lost oil could take months.
“The spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a telephone interview with Iranian state media on Friday that current negotiations were limited in scope and did not include ‘the nuclear issue,'” the Times reports. Trump did specifically state that “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb.”
He also mentioned “nuclear dust,” writing that it “is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it.”
The president said that it “will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and destroyed.”
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Image via Reuters
A federal judge has ordered that President Donald Trump cannot rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, nor may he close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote, CNBC reports. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Just weeks after he was sworn into office, Trump removed members of the board of the Kennedy Center and replaced them with allies and administration officials, including Richard Grenell, Pam Bondi, and Susie Wiles. The new board then voted for Trump to become chairman of the Kennedy Center.
In December, after the White House announced that the board of the Kennedy Center — the official, “living memorial” to the late president — had voted to rename the iconic cultural institution the Trump-Kennedy Center, several members of the Kennedy family took the opportunity to denounce the move.
Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California, wrote: “The Kennedy Center was named after my uncle, President John F Kennedy.”
She called the renaming “beyond comprehension,” “beyond wild,” “downright weird,” and “obsessive in a weird way,” while explaining that the Kennedy Center was named in honor of a man who was interested in the arts, culture, education, language, and history.
“Next thing perhaps he will want to rename JFK Airport, rename the Lincoln Memorial, the Trump Lincoln Memorial,” she said. “The Trump Jefferson Memorial. The Trump Smithsonian. The list goes on.”
May 17 is President John F. Kennedy’s birthday, he was born in 1917.
This article has been updated.
Image via Reuters
The Villages in Florida is deep red Trump country — it’s called the “largest retirement community in the world,” where nearly seven out of 10 county residents voted for Trump in 2024. It’s roughly four hours to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, and it’s not unusual to see Trump flags on the backs of residents’ golf carts.
Trump visited The Villages just a few weeks ago, where one resident told BBC News, “we’re as red as red gets.”
“The Village are very Republican and very Trumpster,” said another.
“Trump 2028!” declared another, waving his fist.
But the tide appears to be turning in Florida, where several polls spell bad news for Trump. His approval is underwater in one poll from April, and one released on Thursday shows a majority of Florida voters hold a negative view of the president.
Still, some may find a letter to the editor in The Villages local news declaring “MAGA has abandoned core Republican principles” surprising.
The letter declares MAGA is “not conservatism,” but rather a “betrayal” that has “embraced indulgence.”
“The irony is cruel,” says the letter writer, Carl Young. “Those who once railed against ‘big government’ now defend its excesses when it serves their side. The philosophy of restraint has been replaced by the politics of spectacle. Rome is burning, and the arsonists call the flames freedom.”
Young scorches Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that he says “produced the highest deficit spending in history.”
Citing dystopian and totalitarian works by George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and Ayn Rand, he writes: “This is not renewal but regression. America has been dragged into an alternate 1984, where responsibility collapses and chaos parades as strength. The political temperature has risen to 451. The pigs now rule the farm.”
“These were never meant as prophecies. They were warnings,” he continues. “Atlas has finally shrugged.”
Image via Shutterstock
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