Every year on this day, military veterans are asked to "come home." As they march down our city streets, it is clear that this day honors the service and sacrifice of those who survived, those who were lucky enough to come home.
But as proud as we may seem, reunited with our compatriots, celebrated by our neighbors who line the sidewalks in support, not all our journeys are reasons for joyful celebration. We returned home without friends, without limbs, without the blissful innocence that once shielded us from the punishing realities of war. Post-traumatic stress, depression, physical wounds and sexual trauma have inflicted permanent scars on a growing population of our generation's war veterans. The pain from these injuries of war only escalate as the combat deescalates.
Many of us get treatment and begin our long road to recovery the moment we step back onto American soil. But for some of us, the healing cannot begin until we enlist in another war at home. Since joining the ranks of gay veterans, I have publicly called this war a battle for equality, integrity, and many other powerful platitudes that resonate well throughout the airspace of a media war-zone. But at the heart of my struggle to end unjust discrimination in the military, these bold moral principles become mere words; the motivation to keep fighting in this war resembles the motivation we realized in Iraq. We did not fight for apple pie, the Constitution, or purple mountains' majesty. We fought for each other.
As we fight to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell," we know that this fight can easily be more painful than physical combat, as the people we fought to protect subject us to the harsh bigotry of popularity polls and the soft bigotry of political inaction. Caught in this battlefield, it is easy to claim victimhood and suffocate in the sadness of national betrayal. Gay Americans, like all scapegoated and stigmatized minorities in America's history, know this feeling all too well. But just as all the patriots who had to come home to fight for equality, we cannot heal our injuries by permanent sorrow and self-pity. The only treatment that can heal the wounds of betrayal and hatred is a recommitment to fight for each other, to stand up for each other, to love one another.
As difficult as it might be, we find healing in the fight. We re-enlist as activists, thrust into public roles while mending private wounds. Like the Grand Army Republic, who camped outside the halls of power protesting in uniform after the Civil War for racial equality, or the Veterans for Peace who march and stand boldly to end the failed policies that subjected any of us to the killing fields in the first place, we are all called upon to serve again. For those whose careers were cut short, our new duty fulfills the true purpose of the uniform: defending our principles of freedom and justice. This is the kind of war that can never end.
As the military's suicide rate has reached historic levels, doubling that of the rest of society, it is easy to see the dangers of hopelessness and escapism among many of our veterans. Some of us come home and want a rare moment of privacy. We have certainly earned our moment to bask in the quietude of peace. But soon our training catches up to us as we see others suffering. We realize our true self-worth when we fight on behalf of others. Like Lieutenant Dan in "Forrest Gump," we cannot help but shout back at the howling winds in a lonely shrimp boat, tossed about in every direction by overpowering waves and despair, seeking out the battle we were meant to fight, yelling "Is that all you got?!" In so doing, we finally start finding our way home.
Follow Lt. Dan Choi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ltdanchoi
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Gay Veterans Honored at Congressional Cemetery » We Love DC
Seems like DADT allows gays in the military. Since implemented, the U.S. has successfully executed several missions (e.g. Balkans, Iraq 1 and 2). Our military is the most effective and professional of any on earth. For over a decade, soldiers have know that gays were among them. Given this, overall combat effectiveness has been outstanding. During this time, I suspect most soldiers knew who among their fellow soldiers was gay.
The glaring truth about DADT is it has worked for this long. The number of gays serving right now outweighs those who were dismissed under the policy in all the 17 years it’s existed. There is no homophobia involved. If you are serving in the military nobody wants to know who you are having sex with unless it is in social conversation. Social issues are best off the battle field. It is that MODEST Americans do not like sex thrown in their faces. Like it or not, that is what is brought up when homosexuality is discussed. It is about sex. I don’t care what is done in other peoples’s bedrooms; but, we don’t like it thrown in our faces. Sex is not a race, gender, fundamental civil right. Sex is a social activity. Choi might say it’s about love; but, it isn’t. There is no love for another when you are saying ‘I want to have sex with men and you are a bigot if you don’t like that’. That is a vicious vile obscene thing to compare.
We all wear the same uniform - we all serve! Most of us could care less who you love or don't love -- we just want to get the mission done!
The waiting is the hardest when you think you have seen the promised land, but the entry drags out.
The policy is in place still because it's NOT that the gay soldier has the problem being a good soldier or pulling their weight, it's the intolerant ones whom the military decided once that it was too great a task to bother educating them against the prejudices they bring.
It's not about a gay soldier being a prancing disco queen on base, how many of those guys want to enlist, really? It's about not being tacitly dishonest with your peers and superiors and able to show that you are just as much a soldier as the next.
Just watch G I Jane again and every time you see Demi fight, picture an openly gay soldier in her place. The values of the story it tells speak beyond the details of the movie.
I will not lie, or tolerate those who do. That part.