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