December 19, 2010

• A Proud Day

  As you all know by now, the United States Senate actually accomplished something yesterday. And not just anything, but probably the most historic thing they have done in 50 years: they worked on a Saturday!

  Oh, wait, I’m being told that they worked on a weekend just earlier this year. Turns out that they did something even more extraordinary and historic: they repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. This by far and away the biggest piece of gay rights legislation that has ever been passed by the Senate. But before I get too far into this amazing day, it is important to remember a couple of things.

  While President Obama and Congress will be out there taking all the credit for this victory, you need to remember that just a couple of months ago a judge threw out the policy stating it was unconstitutional and had Obama’s justice department not appealed the ruling, the policy would have ended right then and gays would have been able to start serving immediately. I won’t ever forget this. But I can forgive because they did actually get it done, in spite of their incompetence of trying to attach the repeal to the defense bill instead of a straight up and down vote.

  Also, Obama could have ended the policy by signing an executive order the same way President Harry Truman ended blacks ban from the military in the 1940s. I don’t fault Obama for this one though; he had the support to have it removed through Congress and executive orders are always politically dangerous.

  But, this day is not about complaining about how it should have been done sooner or about what the opposition had to say about the repeal. It is about celebrating justice for gay Americans, for the military, and for the country itself. I will never forget how I found out and where I was. I had to put in a few hours a work yesterday morning and new there was a vote coming up on repeal. I caught a little bit of CNN around 10am to see if the vote had taken place, but it had not. I checked my email on my phone about 11:20 or so to find the good news: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was no more.

  It was one of those moments where you are happily stunned; you can’t believe what you have been wanting to happen for such a long time finally happened. I compare it to when I was in Grant Park the night Obama got elected president. I’m failing miserably to come up with other things to compare it to. A short while later I was driving home from work and I checked my email on my phone while at a stop light and got more email alerts stating it was over which filled me with pride and happiness.

  I thought back to a rather heated debate I got into earlier this year with a so called friend of mine. Also present was my friend Tom who used to be in the Marines and who is now, I believe, a captain in the Air Force. Tom is married and not gay. But, that night, he expressed his support for the repeal and for gays in the military. It was a conversation I had with him on multiple occasions so it was no big shock to me that he was against the law. At the start of the year, Obama asked for a study to be done to show how repeal would affect the military. The report came back on 11/30 that 70% of people in the military supported repeal of the ban, and it was thanks to open minded people like Tom that this bill passed.

  On this day, I am about as proud to be an American as ever.

  • 12:56 pm
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