Queer Gnosis

by Troy Williams

(I recognize that I have many friends for whom this polemic may be offensive.  But I welcome the debate and the ongoing conversation.)

It’s probably only a matter of time before President Barack Obama eliminates “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.  This is on the forefront of many a gay activist’s agenda.  Protesters are pushing Obama to “keep his promise” after gay linguist Daniel Choi was discharged for coming out on The Rachel Maddow Show.  But of all the promises Obama has made, striking DADT is far from the top of my list of important national priorities. Instead of investing all of our money and time pursuing our militaristic desires, I’d like to propose that all gay activists worldwide combine our efforts to push Obama to keep another one of his promises – namely to end the goddamn fucking war!

I have listened to many queers tell me their rational for wanting full military equality.  I have dear friends engaged in this fight.  And if we were Sweden or Jamaica, I’d totally agree that gays should serve openly. But we’re not.  We are the U.S. fucking A.  Our business is to expand the empire and commandeer the resources of weaker nations for our own consumption.  I find it immensely difficult to muster patriotism when it comes to the imperial objectives of the U.S. government.  We have continually witnessed the abuses of American nationalism through war and conquest. I don’t want the freedom to invade foreign countries.  I don’t want the freedom to drop bombs on villages that kill innocent children and families.  I don’t want the freedom to roundup dark-skinned people in midnight raids.  I don’t want the freedom to waterboard and torture.  I don’t want the freedom to bully and intimidate the world at the end of a gun.
Not now, not ever.  The U.S. Military is a corrupt institution. It thrives on rabid sexism, racism and homophobia to enforce discipline.  The military strips down recruits by initiating them into a world of extreme machismo and authoritarian obedience.  Women and queers have traditionally been used as epithets to degrade the training soldier.  This is of course to make them better, more compliant machines.   Janice Karpinski was the commanding general over Abu Ghraib. When she was on KRCL’s RadioActive a couple years back, she threw out a sobering fact.   She told our listeners that if you are an enlisted female you have over a 50% chance of being sexually assaulted. Not by the insurgents mind you, but rather your fellow soldiers.  According to a March CBS report, in 2006 there were “2,974 cases of rape and sexual assault across the services”.  On top of that, The Pentagon acknowledged, “some 80 percent of rapes are never reported.”  I wonder what the stats will be for openly out and proud queers.

There are branches of our military that depend on your ability to kill another human being.  The military dehumanizes the “enemy” with xenophobic epithets like “sand-nigger” and “hadji”.  It’s so much easier to kill someone after you strip them of their humanity.  This is something that we “queers” should understand all too well.  To covet membership in a sexist, racist organization that routinely denigrates and viciously marginalizes “enemies” should be anathema to every American faggot.

And of course what about our returning soldiers? Divorce rates for Iraq war veterans have been spiking.  What good is finally getting a gay marriage if it’s going to hell once you get back from your third tour of duty?  What about the psychological and emotional impacts of invasion and occupation?  How do you live with yourself when you have killed in the name of the flag?  Are you prepared to fight the unending medical bureaucracy just to get basic health care when you come home fucked up?  Are you ready for a government to tell you that you don’t have the symptoms you say you do?  Or that exposure to some ungodly chemical agent isn’t why you are cramping, bleeding and dying?

Before we get all fired up over the unfairness of not being allowed to drop a cruise missile on an Afghani wedding party, let’s stop and take pause at what are devotion to militarism has cost our nation.  We have invested in a trillion dollar war and now experience economic recession.  Our citizens return maimed, and are too often unable to access services.   Torture, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition and a disregard for our best principles have compromised our national soul.

I know we want to believe Obama will turn things around. But when I see his commitment to military tribunals and his refusal to hold torturers accountable for their actions, I become suspicious.  I’m not interested in a kinder, gentler empire.  I’m interested in the US being an upstanding global citizen.

Americans get off on violence.  For god’s sake, our national anthem is a war song with the “rockets red glare” followed by all those “bombs bursting in air”.  I get it.  War kicks ass.  And a group of angry queers bullied in high school probably could do all kinds of damage with a knife and a grenade.  My recommendation: if you want to be a mercenary for hire, then go join Xe, (the Security Organization Formerly Known as Blackwater).  There you can shoot and maim to sustain our empire – for profit!  The pay is unmatched and you can literally make a killing.

And finally, the last thing we need is a flurry of out gay veterans leaving the service and bringing a military worldview into the gay political movement.  Spare us please.  If we think assimilation, male privilege and compliance to heterosexual norms is bad now, imagine what it could be with a bunch of regimented, sexist automaton fags.  The only gay soldiers I want to see are in porn.   This is the best practical place for them.  Slap that Kevlar and show me your salute! Other than that, the gay community should not be foot soldiers for imperial demagogues.   We’ve got more important work to do people.  Don’t ask, don’t kill.