YES!!!!!!!!
That is how I am feeling right now, knowing that FINALLY, DADT has been repealed, and that members of our armed forces can no longer be thrown out simply for being honest about who they are and who they love. Granted we still have those who have absolutely no concept of what our military is like who are now trying to foment resistance and are trying to hatch devious plots to overthrow the repeal. These are people who absolutely refuse to look at the facts, who refuse to thoroughly examine the results of the study that was conducted by the Pentagon and which received a much higher response rate than surveys normally receive. Believe me folks, I have studied business, and one of the classes I had to take involved statistics. Most surveys only receive a response rate of between 2% and 3%. This survey received a response rate of 28%! And 70% of the military members and their families stated that it was time to get rid of this asinine, discriminatory piece of junk! But that was not good enough! NOt for John McCain! NOt for Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which is now one of the most recent additions to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of Hate Groups. Not good enough for Mitch McConnell!
And why? Because they are so obsessed with sex, that they are totally ignoring the fact that they are dealing with REAL PEOPLE! People like John McCain, Tony Perkins, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eugene DelGaudio, Porno Pete LaBarbera–they are all part of the problem, not part of the solution. They want to see this country turned into a theocracy and they want to be the ones to lay down the rules that everyone else must follow. And yet, they forget about the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution which forbids that very thing. This nation is a nation founded upon the principles of individual freedoms and rights–the right to freedom of (and therefore also the freedom FROM) religion, the freedom of speech (but not the freedom to have an audience), the freedom of association, the freedom to love the person who absolutely, totally, 100% makes you feel even happier that you already are. This is a nation founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence does NOT say “Life, LIberty and The Pursuit of Happiness only if you are straight and belong to MY church.” NO! It says “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. PERIOD! End of sentence! Get that through your head NOM, FRC, Focus on the Family, Public Advocate, and all the rest of you out there who are still trying to oppress the LGBT population of this country.
Get this through your heads–we are not asking for “special rights.” We are asking for the very same rights that all other Americans enjoy. We are asking for the right to have job security without fear of being fired simply because we are married to someone of the same gender, without worrying that we will be fired if we happen to have been born transgender or intersex. We are asking for the right to buy the house we can afford without being discriminated against. For all of the ways in which you think we are asking for special rights, take the time to actually do this little exercise. For every negative comment you have about the LGBT civil Rights Movement that you have in your mind, have ever heard, or have ever written down, delete LGBT and substitute “Black” or “Jewish.” Substitute “Left-Handed” or “Redhead.” Do that and you will see just how false your assumptions about us are.
And for those of you who so wrongly assume that just because LGBT men and women no longer have to hide their orientation that there will now be sexual assaults committed by LGBT’s on heterosexuals, pay very close attention. 98% of all sexual assaults, sexual harassment, and sexual coercion, including those which involve the “date rape” drugs, are committed by heterosexuals who have never been taught how to think with the head on top of their shoulders. Actually go back and read the reports of the lesbians who have been raped because the men raping them attempted to “cure” them. You cannot cure what is not sick. Once everyone realizes that being different is NOT a sin, that being different is NOT a crime, that being different is NOT abnormal, then this country will be one step closer to the ideals of founding Fathers and Founding Mothers.
