Where the Homos Go

(via political-cartoons)

I’m writing letters to my loved ones in case I don’t return from Afghanistan. I hope my partner never has to open his. If he does, it will ask him to tell who I was, because I couldn’t.

Read more here.

by Erik J.

I used to like Senator John McCain. I remember in seventh grade getting a handout in class of the Democratic and Republican candidates. There was Clinton, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan… and I remember liking what the chart had to say about McCain. 

Throughout each step of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal process, McCain kept coming up with a new reason to prolong it being from being repealed. He wanted the top military officials to be in favor of it;  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and other Joint Chiefs are in favor. He wanted a study of how military service members would feel about it, and the military gave a positive review. Then he wanted time to study the review. Meanwhile, his daughter came out in favor of repeal. His wife favored repeal, then backtracked the following day saying she supports her husband’s position. He wanted time to read it. 

Now he has his congressional hearings on the report. Today he said his committee didn’t have time to review the report fully, that the sample size was too small (though it was larger than most polling sample sizes that politicians use) and that the report doesn’t say whether it should be repealed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen directly challenged McCain: “Repeal of the law will not prove unacceptable risk to military readiness,” Mullen said.

Courts have ruled “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” unconstitutional. President Obama is in favor of repeal. Congressional Democrats and some Republicans are in favor of the repeal. Most Americans polled are in favor of the repeal. Many Western nations’ armies have had out gay service members for years with no problems.

  
Has McCain lost his mind? His changed views on a variety of issues has been staggering. But it’s his stance on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that drives me crazy. It’s like I’m looking at an old uncle who is quickly getting Alzheimer’s and is devolving into his racist, misogynist 22-year-old version of himself. Once this law is repealed — and it will be repealed, whether this year or this decade — history will judge McCain just as history has judged those who fought against women suffrage and desegregation.
Jon Stewart recently said as much.
McCain likely will be retiring after this term. He certainly won’t run again for president. So why is he fighting, kicking and screaming as everyone else allows the military’s “brothers in arms” be allowed to “like to hold brothers in their arms?”

Only the lowest of the males species would ever encourage “corrective rape” of lesbians or anyone for that matter, but here we have retired Army dickbag Joe Rephyansky writing:

My solution would get the distaff part of our homosexual population off our collective ‘Broke Back,’ thus giving straight male GIs a fair shot at converting lesbians and bringing them into the mainstream.

The quote was removed from his post at The Daily Caller.

+ of Rehyansky’s hideous original piece here

(via political-cartoons)

A ‘Queer’ Argument Against Marriage

Writer and editor of That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore talks to NPR about how the current gay rights movement has departed from in gay liberation radicalism. Though Sycamore doesn’t use the term, she resists the “homonormativity” of gay assimilation, which she identifies as really trying to access privileges traditionally enjoyed by heterosexuals (but privilege nonetheless). Though I reject her categorization of marriage, military service, adoption, and ordination into the priesthood as “straight issues,” I ultimately concur that gays accessing state-consolidated privilege does not mean equality has been achieved. Rather, it merely means that the circle of privilege has been enlarged to include LGBs who can abide by an acceptable form of queerness.

Only through the dismantling of privilege itself where even the most gender queer, or other relationship configurations are respected and protected, will we all be able to take a step forward together toward equality.

Transcript here.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal by Rob Tornoe

Who says President Obama hasn’t lifted a finger on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?

Eric Alterman details how President Obama’s refusal to act, or rather, NOT act, on Judge Phillips’ injunction will contribute to Democratic losses come November by alienating a key progressive constituency. He writes:

At an MTV forum Thursday, Obama was pressed by a member of the audience, and  explained “This is not a situation in which, with the stroke of a pen, I can end the policy.” Well, he’s right about that, but only because this time, it would end all by itself without Obama having to do anything. His willingness to allow the Justice Department to challenge the policy re-affirms, as if we already didn’t know this, that Barack Obama simply does not care about the wishes of the people who put him in office. If the president believes that by pandering to the prejudices of the people who hate him, he can advance his central political priorities, then his strongest supporters had better be prepared to swim ashore because they’re going overboard with or without their bathing suits on.

+ here

[image source]

Voting outside the box. It’s a hard mandate, but in this piece published at Advocate.com, I offer reasons why LGBT should consider not voting for Democrats who have tied a carrot in front of them, but have not delivered on actual policy. Moreover, as a party, Democrats have quite little to say about LGBT issues on their platform.

‘Sexual Disorientation’ by Tom Toles / The Washington Post

How disorienting it is to give up heterosexual privilege, eh? It’s so hard for them to understand that it is they who have “special rights.”

“Change” should give us the shortest line between points A & B, not a God-damned meandering river.

[via:inothernews]