From: waveland@carson.u.washington.edu (Eric Holeman)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,pnw.motss
Subject: Re: Question? Military Ban
Date: 28 Jan 1993 09:29:19 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

In article <1993Jan27.141053.26405@lclark.edu> snodgras@lclark.edu 
     (Bil Snodgrass) writes:

>But I have a question.  How did this one issue become our
>playing card into the Federal Government?  Why didn't we
>push Clinton to fight for a "federal equal rights" bill?

IMHO:

Rights bills are a nice, relatively harmless bit of symbolism, but 
I'm not particularly wild about them.  In the first place, if someone 
really wants to discriminate, they will with or without a rights law. 
They'll just be a bit more discreet about it.  

Secondly, I'm sufficiently libertarian to get a bad taste in my 
mouth from laws that would compel someone to be nice to me in a 
private transaction.  If they don't want to rent their house to 
me, fine.  I don't particularly want to rent to Southern Baptists.

The military ban, however, is not a private thing.  It's discrimination
against me by my own government, the one I pay taxes to, the one I
ostensibly own a piece of, the government that claims to derive its powers
from my consent.  


>I know that several years ago I got a newsletter from the HRF and
>they wanted money for this issue...but due to the fact that I am
>pretty anti-military I couldn't contribute.....

I'm not wild about the military myself, but consider these:  

1)  The military is not going to go away.  It's older than the nation
itself.  I hope that within my lifetime it will be an obsolete
institution, but in the meantime, for those who are into it, it shouldn't
be denied to them.  Hundreds of thousands of homos'n'bi's are in the
military, and they are no less queer for their military status. 
Discrimination hurts them.  

2)  The military ban is one of  the last relics of overt discrimination by
the government.  It's also the most prominent.  It's the cornerstone of 
numerous other forms of discrimination, including the Boy Scouts.  It's
the one that's so patently, obviously unfair and inhumane that even Al
D'Amato can't pretend to ignore it.  

3) We're damn close to getting it lifted.  Getting it lifted will help
thousands of our brothers and sisters.   Because of this alone, it's worth
doing what we can to get it lifted.  

>(I am not condemning the move...I am excited that anything is up
>there, I am just wondering how this approach is going to help
>the rest of us.)

When the ban is gone, the bigots will no longer have a real example of
direct discrimination by the government to point to.  The Boy Scouts, of
whom Bill Clinton is the honorary president, will no longer be able to
point to the military's ban to justify their own.  Other institutions that
discriminate will likewise lose a little bit of their rationalization.  

And, of course, a few of them will come out of the closet.  Some who were
so rudely outed, like Col. Cammermeyer, will return to the service.  With
a few gay colonels, it's only a matter of time that before there's
an out  gay general.  And hey, a rolemodel is a role model.  We need gay
generals, gay stockbrokers, gay capitalists and gay cops just ads much as
we need gay folksingers and gay peace marchers and gay hairdressers. 

Whatever your position on the military, the ban is worth lifting.  You'll
gain a lot from it, and you can still keep on working to get rid of the
military if that's your bag.