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.
So, suppose for a moment there is someone who is gay who supports the war, for whatever reason, and doesn’t see it just as an expansion of empire and so on. Or wants to take advantage of the tuition benefits. Or, really, doesn’t have ‘kill ‘em all’ as their motive for joining. Shouldn’t that person be allowed to be upset when DADT tramples a dream to be in the military?
Your position here is, to me, a bit like someone who is staunchly opposed to marriage in general arguing against gay marriage by claiming all the things it destroys, how it makes you lose your sense of self, how it never works, and so on. Not a perfect analogy, obviously, but still, just because you see reasons against wanting to be in the military doesn’t negate potentially good, rational reasons for someone else.
People can be upset all they want. I imagine there are many people whose lives have been destroyed by US manufactured bombs are are also even more upset.
Our military’s actions since Vietnam have been deplorable — one invasion, one coup, after another. There needs to be an ongoing critique of the US military and our actions abroad. This is more important than giving queers a right to “serve”.
And as the debate over DADT continues, there also needs to be an equal debate over the imperial ambitions of the US government, enforced by our military.
I don’t see that critique anywhere in the gay press.
Troy
Maybe the gay press assumes the critique is happening elsewhere?
They (gay press) like to bandy about the whole “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” motif when it refers to justice for gays. Other injustices, like the current disaster that is the US military complex, don’t get much coverage.
I think it’s a casualty in hopes of focusing their message, or something. Which is unfortunate, because ignoring things like this makes the gay message look really self-serving.
How about this argument: The military’s expanding need for blood and unbroken bones combined with the dissolution of the draft have led military recruiters to focus on easy marks, namely kids in communities of color and poverty that have already been hosed by the current system. By allowing DADT to continue, the inevitable consequences are that LGBT people are further segmented from other disenfranchised populations. As the wars become increasingly abhorred, DADT begins to look less like a tool of oppression and more like a free pass for privileged fags.
And don’t even start thinking about the queer kids in the neighborhoods who are being sifted through by recruiters. They end up being deprived of the one chance they see to get out of their piss poor conditions. All because some privileged queers are arguing that nobody should want to fight in wars anyway, with so many productive alternatives available to them.
As long as the military ranks are disproportionately filled by populations who are already under-educated and under-served by society, allowing DADT to continue will only serve to mark queers as distinct from the disenfranchised, while at the same time taking a less than ideal opportunity away from the queer kids who feel they have have no other options. Our community will be perceived as more elitist while actually becoming more oppressed.
So end DADT. And end the war. But don’t pretend that a bad war makes DADT okay.
Hi Will,
Your comment, “the need for blood and unbroken bones” pretty much sums up my argument. The US military as it is presently constituted and deployed requires pawns to serve as disposable foot soldiers.
And yes, you are correct that they recruit from the poor (which are often people of color). However, there are also poor black queers who are their targets as well.
I would like to see the HRC, LAMBDA Legal, and all of my friends fighting to repeal DADT take equally strong stands against empire, militarism and war.
I simply don’t see that. I see it from Jeff Keys and a few other folks from Iraq Veterans Against the War, but I don’t see it from the privileged queers you are referring to.
Ending the war, ending the expansion of US hegemony, and a cessation of military coups and hostility ought to be at the forefront of any social justice movement.
In that, the national LGBT movements have been tragically and woefully silent. I’d like to see that change!
They are recruiting the poor black queer kids. And then refusing admission or kicking them out when the queer trait comes to light.
Again, this perpetuates both a stigmatization and a perception of privilege.
And you’re right. The national orgs have been silent. And I would assume that as soon as DADT is repealed they will not shift into messaging about ending the slaughter of queer youth on the battlefields (which I agree they should), but will instead shift more energy to marriage or to the abhorrent nature of tax inequity among families with large estates. That’s what they do. I don’t expect a monkey to moo just as I don’t expect HRC to be relevant to the daily needs of queers who need them most. I can’t wait to be wrong on this. But I can’t hold my breath either.
Hence the need to be vocal and loud. I restate my point: I don’t want the freedom to invade, occupy, bomb, torture and steal the resources of another people. I don’t want the freedom to engage another military coup to destabilize yet another country (as the US has done in Chile, Venezuela, Haiti, Mossadagh, Panama,et al.).
And don’t get me started about nuclear proliferation and the threat of mutually assured annihilation. Who will fire the first missile that ends civilization as we know it?
Maybe some lucky queer white man who pushes the button? Well, at least he was free to serve out and proud as he released his rockets into an exploding orgasm of death and destruction!
I say keep DADT! And let’s focus our efforts on ending the military industrial complex’s hold on our national, economic and cultural psyche!
Troy,
You have the uncanny ability to paint the world with a very broad brush. It also seems that you choose to paint with only two colors: black and white. The reality is, there are plenty of gay and lesbian men and women serving proudly in our military already. One is not required to wear their sexuality on their sleeve in order to be proud of who they are. I don’t talk about my intimate sexual practices with my co-workers, not because I’m ashamed, but because it’s unprofessional.
Also, not everyone that chooses to join the military is a de-humanized, blood thirsty, sociopath. Some of us, due to certain circumstances in our lives, require the kind of security that the military offers (i.e. health insurance, a steady paycheck, education benefits, etc.)
Troy, I know that your heart is in the right place, but please try to remember that the world is comprised of many shades of gray.