Even Celebs Get Busy Signals...

I just watched the linked video by Lady Gaga, asking the Senate to vote to put an end to the discriminatory 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'  (DADT)law enacted in 1993 by President Clinton as a compromise allowing GLBT citizens of the United States to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces.  Lady Gaga got a busy signal when trying to call Senator Schumer's office, and a full voice mail box at Senator Gillibrand's office.  In 1993, I was in High School in Miami, and DADT was heralded by some as a step forward, and hated by others as a kind of 'separate but equal' law that forced people like me back into the proverbial closet.  Today, almost twenty years later, we live in a nation, and indeed, a world that is very different from the one we lived in back then.  Five U.S. States and the District of Columbia now perform Gay Marriages, states like New York recognize marriages performed by other states as legal and binding, and California's hateful Proposition 8 has been declared unconstitutional by a Federal Judge appointed by George H.W. Bush.

Laura Bush, Nancy Reagan, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and many many other so called 'conservative' leaders agree that it is time to put an end to the discrimination, as does much of the Military leadership.  The cost of identifying, investigating, Court Martial, and discharge of the thousands of people who offered their lives in service of this nation can not only be measured in the millions, if not billions of dollars, but in the unthinkable loss of talented soldiers, leaders, translators, and officers during a time of war.  Some people will say that because I am a gay man myself, that I have a bias with regard to this issue.  I say they are right.  They have never had to live in a world that makes it OK for people to beat them, hit them in the face with bricks, assault them verbally, attack them psychologically, or have any of the other things that I have had done to me in my life done to them.  I have seen friends killed, been beaten down, been made to feel worthless and condemned, and I am still here, fighting for the same rights that are guaranteed me by the United States Constitution.  Should I, or any other person like me, choose to serve our nation by entering the Armed Services, we should be allowed to do so proudly and openly.  Our spouses should be allowed the same rights and privileges afforded to heterosexual couples.  Our lives should not mean any less than those of our heterosexual counterparts should we die in service to our country.

I have spent my adult life living it out loud and proud and open.  Not because I want attention or recognition, but because I have always believed it was my JOB to stand up and take the hits for those who could not take them for themselves.  And take those hits I have; conversion therapy, beatings, sexual violation, verbal abuse, social exile are just a few of the things I have been forced to experience in my journey.  I AM STILL HERE.  I AM STILL FIGHTING.  I WILL NOT STOP.  There are so many others who have fallen on this road, or who have gone into a life of lies, pretending to be someone and something they are not.  I fight for them, I fight for those who came before us, I fight for those who will come after.  My fight is not one of military, rather of militant methods.  I will not be afraid to continue, because so many others can not do for themselves what I will put my life on the line to do.  I will be a part of the change I want to see in the world.  I will not let a busy signal stop me.

What will you do?

ignorance is bliss, isn't it?

  While I hear debates rage on among my friends and family about Amending the Constitution for this or that piece of social change, I am forced to reflect on the purpose of this great document.  My GLBT friends are in favor of an Amendment guaranteeing the right to marry to ALL United States Citizens.  My conservative friends are in favor of an Amendment banning the same.  Well, I sit in a different chair, being in favor of neither, as I believe the Constitution already states that the government shall not deprive any U.S. Citizen 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'

This fantastic document was created to LIMIT THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT.  Not to dictate what the people can and can not do.  Amending it to define marriage in any form is a violation of the most basic purpose of the Constitution.  Marriage has, and always should be, the territory of the States.  The United States government is accountable and answerable to the States, and ultimately,, the people.  Should a state decide that they wish to allow a person to marry a person of the same gender, the Federal Government is then accountable to the state to provide the couple all rights and benefits it would impart to any other married couple.  The recent court case in Massachusetts reinforces this by declaring parts of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.  In effect, it fights the conservatives using their own premise of States' Rights (which I, as a liberal, heartily subscribe to as well, BTW) being protected by the documents that created our Republic.

In addition, I always find it funny when people say we live in a Democracy.  Have they never recited the Pledge of Allegiance?  In schools across the United States, each morning, children recite the words "...and to the Republic..." while being told we live in a Democracy.  In a Democracy, the votes of the people are counted individually.   Had we been a true Democracy, Al Gore would have been the 43rd President of the United States, simply based on the Popular Vote.  In this Republican system we employ, we use an Electoral College to speak for each state, a system of delegates that has the power to override the voice of the people from time to time.  So many people I know live in a state of ignorant denial about our Nation.  So many more live in a state of stressed out awareness.  I wonder which is easier?

I certainly sometimes wish I did not have the burden of awareness that research and reading and education have placed squarely on my shoulders.  Then again, if I don't use my voice, if I ignore my responsibility as a Citizen to stand and speak out for what I believe...I would be guilty of the same kind of crime so many others commit every day.  A crime of complacency.  Had our Founding Fathers been content to settle for 'Taxation Without Representation,' we would be living in a British Colony.  Had President Lincoln been content to allow the Confederated States of America remain a separate Nation, I would have been born a Citizen of a different Country.  So, I guess when it comes down to it, ignorance is NOT bliss after all...