Post-DADT: "His Airman, My Marine :)"

Another reason to celebrate the repeal of the odious Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy: the cutest military couple of the year.

The caption on the soldier on the left's Tumblr site, "Whether or Not," says: "His Airman, My Marine :)"

(And yes, as someone notes in the comments section, that's a DVD of Tyler Perry's movie Why Did I Get Married? on the left. Ironies....)

And (h/t to Reggie H. for pointing to this) a photo just below the one above:

Its caption? "We're not afraid."

Bless them both, and let them finish their service safe and strong!

Photo: The Kiss

V-J Day in Times Square © Alfred Eisenstaedt (Life, 1945)

Marissa Gaeta (left) kisses fellow US naval officer Citlalic Snell Photograph: MC2 Joshua Mann/AFP/Getty Images

DADT Finally DOA + OccupyWall Street Protests

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the failed "compromise" policy restricting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender service people to serve openly, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993 after the Republican-controlled Congress passed it, is now officially no longer on the books.  As of today, LGBTQ people, who have been members of the US military since its establishment, can now serve without fear of prosecution simply because of their sexual or gender orientation, whether they announce it publicly or not. The policy also should end the costly witchhunts to root out queer servicepeople, and automatically halts all investigations currently underway.

( Matthew Cavanaugh / European Pressphoto Agency )
Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, who lost a leg in Iraq, testified to Congress in 2008 that he told his fellow troops he was gay and that it didn't erode "unit cohesion" -- an argument used by opponents of gays serving openly in the military

The change occurred not because of the military's or politicians' benevolence, but because of intensive and sustained efforts, including militancy, to shift public attitudes on LGBTQ people, and to repeal an overtly discriminatory policy that never should have been enacted in the first place. A strong congratulations goes to all the LGBTQ and straight people, especially those in the service and veterans, who fought to end the policy, and a hearty thanks to all who have supported repealing the policy, especially the members of Congress who voted to end it; President Barack Obama, who, after some dillydallying, finally signed it into law; and the military leaders and officers who have taken steps to implement it.  All branches of the military are now taking applications for anyone who qualifies, and this includes LGBTQ people.

Now, if only we could end all the wars the US currently is engaged in and bring the majority of our troops, whatever their sexual orientation, home!

+++

As I type this entry, thousands of people of all ages are participating in a public protest, Occupy Wall Street, down at Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan, against the past, current and likely future economic crises caused by Wall Street other other American and global financial firms. From 2007-2009, the United States and numerous other countries suffered the worst economic catastrophe since the Global Economic Crisis, also known as the Great Depression, which stretched from 1929 through the 1940s. The most recent crisis resulted from a number of factors, among the bursting housing bubble, the effects of deregulatory policies that loosened longstanding financial controls, overleveraging among consumers and banks, poor to non-existent government oversight, and a sense that our public tax dollars and private savings existed to be played as in a casino. We know the aftermath; we also know that Wall Street and foreign banks have received billions of dollars of taxpayer support, and continue to. In addition to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), banks have benefitted from trillions of dollars in Federal Reserve-backed swaps, loans, and monetary policies. They contine to benefit, and yet despite destroying the lives of millions of Americans and people across the globe, there have been almost no prosecutions, let alone serious, sustained investigations, of the people involved.  Wall Street bankers continue to influence and shape policies in Washington, DC and in other government capitals, while also strongly shaping non-governmental, global banking policies.

This then is part of the background to the protests, which Adbusters and the online group Anonymous organized. Related are the ongoing trials of organized labor; public labor unions have suffered repeated legislative assaults to match the longstanding rhetorical ones in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, Maine, and Ohio, and private ones are battling corporations like Verizon, Boeing, and Albertsons, to name just three. (The strikers and Albertsons have settled their issues for now, while the communication workers unions ended the Verizon strike without an agreement, and the legal issues involving Boeing's attempted job shift to South Carolina also continue.) The protests began on Saturday, and will continue for the foreseeable future.  The Occupy Wall Street site features live forums, chat rooms, phone conferencing bridges, photos, live streaming, and user maps for participants.  A number of protesters have been arrested (I can't verify the numbers so I don't want to post incorrect ones), some based on an obscure law preventing masks during protests. Others have been brutally roughed up (as the photos below show), including one who allegedly had police pile onto him as he was having an asthma attack. I've also posted below a video of the Verizon workers who on strike to keep their tenuous hold on the middle class.

A photo photos from @Hatofhornigold (with permission; thank you! If you Twitter, do follow this real-life mariner!)

http://twitgoo.com/4jawpe @OccupyWallStreet

http://twitgoo.com/4jm83t. @occupywallstreetnyc

http://twitgoo.com/4jaype @OccupyWallStreet

http://twitgoo.com/4jmgwp Crowd raises hands to show they approve civil rights lawyer Sam Cohen's offer to represent us #OccupyWallStreet

Bye Bye, DADT! + Niemeyer's 103rd

There's been so little to celebrate of late with the current administration or the now lame-duck Congress, and the capitulation on the tax cuts for millionaires-to-get-an-extension-of-unemployment insurance for the most vulnerable Americans, during the winter holidays no less, was a particularly bitter pill.  But today proved that the government will not end the year only on low notes.

Today brought one of the highest of the year thus far. Although Senate Republicans last week killed a bill to provide funding for 9/11 first-responders and the Defense Appropriation Bill, which had included a DADT repeal component, and this morning, with the support of five Democrats, quashed passage of the Dream Act for the children of undocumented immigrants, the Democrats with some GOP help today broke this sorry string by first voting 63-33 (a third of the US Senate was still voting no, but six Republicans, Collins, Brown, Murkowski, Olympia Snowe, Mark Kirk and George Voinovich, voted with nearly all the Democrats) to invoke cloture on a bill introduced by Joe Lieberman, then voted 65-31 this afternoon to repeal the 1993 Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) policy, which barred openly lesbian and gay servicepeople from serving in the US military. The House had already passed a DADT repeal earlier this week. President Obama, who had promised in campaign to repeal this odious policy, has fulfilled this promise, and is expected to sign the bill in the next few days.

For years before the 1993 policy, enacted under President Bill Clinton as a response to extreme reactions to his attempts to end the prior, harsher policy against LGBT servicepeople (Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was strongly against allowing openly gay LGBT to serve), brave active duty soldiers, veterans and gay activists had fought to allow LGBT people to serve openly in the military, and after the 1993 policy took effect, activists increased their efforts to repeal DADT, since like previous policies it consigned valuable members of the US military to dismissal, destroying their careers and livelihoods prematurely, based solely on their sexual orientations or others' perceptions thereof.

After this week's votes I, like all other LGBTQ people, and like all Americans, can say I have lived to see the day that this heinous, unequal policy and the one preceding it were repealed by my federal representatives, and signed into law by the President. Most impressive to me was that Congress's courage finally matched that of the American people, who in increasing numbers in recent years have come to believe this policy should be ended, and that of the military's leaders, officers and soldiers, who also agreed that it should be repealed.

Thank you to all those who fought tirelessly to end this policy, through protests, lawsuits, putting their careers and lives on the line. Thank you to all the LGBT people who protested, wrote their officials, wrote articles and blogs to push for the repeal, and to all the non-LGBT allies. Thank you to all those in the military leadership, from the Secretary of Defense to the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs and present and past officers, who changed their views and did the right thing. Thank you to the rank-and-file, whose responses helped to shape the broader public discourse and the specific arguments used by those who still were unsure. Thank you to Congress, especially Speaker of the House Pelosi, and Senators and Majority Leader Harry Reid, Joe Lieberman, and Kristen Gillibrand, along with the handful of Republicans, for passing this bill. And, once President Obama signs it into law, we will be able to thank him for doing what he promised he would do, and what should have been done years ago.

***

On Wednesday, one of the great living architects, Oscar Niemeyer, an artist whose medium is sinuous concrete and steel, turned 103, and celebrated his birthday by inaugurating the newly opened site he had designed in 1997, the headquarters of the Fundação Oscar Niemeyer (Oscar Niemeyer Foundation), in Niterói, a city across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro.  The Foundation was created in 1988, but is only now debuting this spectacular, futuristic site, which is several kilometers to the north of another of Niemeyer's masterpieces, the space ship-atop-a-hill that houses Rio's/Niterói's Museum of Contemporary Art. Both the foundation's new headquarters and the Museum are part of a series of buildings and sites, known as the Caminho Oscar Niemeyer, in Niterói (formerly the provincial capital when Rio de Janeiro was the federal capital of Brazil), which also includes People's Theater of Niterói, Charitas Boat Station, and Plaza JK (Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazil's president from 1956-1960, and the visionary behind Brasília).  All are accessible after a short and picturesque ferry-ride from the city of Rio.

Though Niemeyer has designed notable sites and buildings all over the world, 600 in total, including some of the buildings at the United Nations (with Le Corbusier), he is perhaps most famous for his site plan and structures for Brazil's third and permanent capital, at Brasília, which he created at the behest of then-president Juscelino Kubitschek beginning in 1956.

Lt. Dan Choi, Freedom Fighter

On Thursday, West Point graduate, Iraq War veteran and New York National Guardsman Lieutenant Dan Choi (above, photo from Qweerty.com) powerfully concluded a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) rally, featuring comedienne Kathy Griffin, to repeal the abhorrent and failed Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy with direct action: he and Captain Joe Pietrangelo II, who unsuccessfully tried to take his discharge as a result of DADT to the Supreme Court, chained themselves to the White House's gates. According to Qweerty's report, GetEQUAL co-founder Robin McGehee was arrested for helping Choi lock himself to the gates. HRC head Joe Solomonese and Griffin allegedly agreed to accompany Choi to the White House, but neither did. Griffin also supposedly had cameras on the HRC rally premises, for her show, but it's unclear if they captured Choi's protest.

From YouTube user goodboydc (John Aravosis), video of Lt. Dan Choi handcuffing himself to the gates:


From Lt. Choi's press release:

“Hello. My name is Lt. Dan Choi. I am being discharged from the US Army because I am gay and dared to say it out loud.

Today, I am here on a mission with Capt. Jim Pietrangelo, and we are asking you all to join us. We’re calling you to action because we are at a turning point — a moment in time where talk is no longer enough, and action is required.

Equality is not going to happen by itself.

You have been told that the President has a plan. But Congressman Barney Frank confirmed to us this week that the President still is not fully committed to repealing Don’t

Ask, Don’t Tell this year.

And if we don’t seize this moment it may not happen for a very long time.

Some may tell you that I am one of the lucky ones. I have been welcomed back by my unit with open arms. And it would be easy for me to stay quiet and hope that change will happen.

But what I was taught at West Point and learned in war is — hope is not a strategy. As officers, James and I both find it a dereliction of our moral duty to remain silent while thousands of our brothers and sister are not allowed to serve openly and honestly.

Capt. Pietrangelo was honorably discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2004 and I will be subject to the same shortly. As officers we are here today fighting for those in the ranks, and we need our Commander in Chief to do the same.

Our fight is not here at Freedom Plaza, it is at the White House. We are walking to the White House right now to send the President a message. So…take out your cell phones and your cameras.

Document this moment. Join us as together — we make history.”

Choi and Pietroangelo were also arrested and spent a night in jail, but Choi was not allowed to speak with or telephone his lawyer. He and Pietroangelo were subsequently released after pleading not guilty to failing to obey a lawful order. Their trial will occur at a later date.

Despite pledging to repeal DADT, President Barack Obama has moved at a glacial pace on this and other issues. Leading military figures in his administration, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Admiral Mike Mullen, and General David Petraeus, have called for allowing out gays and lesbians to serve in the military, but as Choi noted on the day of his arrest, Congressman Barney Frank told him that the President still wasn't fully on board. Why? Why during this past year hasn't he even issued an executive stop-loss order? Would that have been so difficult? Since the implementation of this terrible compromise under Bill Clinton, this policy has done tremendous damage to the lives of LGBTQ servicepeople and, though it's often not articulated fully, our military as well. I refuse to offer excuses for this president, so someone else can do that. I don't doubt that if the House passes the Senate health insurance reform and reconciliation bills this weekend we'll hear that Obama can now dedicate more time to the issue. But between him and Congress, there must be action, and with dispatch. Lesbian, gay and bi soldiers' lives and career, and the effectiveness of the US military, hang in the lurch.

Lt. Dan Choi knows this as well as anyone; despite exemplary service, he is now facing discharge for coming out. President Obama surely must know this, and if he doesn't he needs to grasp it. Quickly.