I’m super happy to introduce today’s special guest author / illustrator! Premee is not only exceptionally talented, but also living proof that not everyone living in Calgary is necessarily a gun-toting, cowboy hat-wearing, cattle-prodding, grit-eating, hay-growing, gay-hoeing, well, you get the idea…

The US military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy has always been a tough one for gay activists.  The proposed changes may make it a little easier to be a uniformed gay, inasmuch as an anonymous outing is no longer cause for immediate discharge (there’s an investigation now!), but the fact remains that the military culture is generally homophobic and feels that homophobia is a valid excuse to exclude, ostracize, threaten, and whine about undue exposure to gay folks.  “But it’ll ruin unit cohesion!”  “I’m scared I’ll be poked awake one morning!”  “I can’t focus on my job with all that gay around!”  “No man’s foxhole is safe!”

The rational response, of course, would be education and desegregation; unfortunately, it looks like the official response is ghettoization.

Marine Commandant General J. Conway has been interviewed saying “I would not ask our Marines to live with someone that’s homosexual if we can possibly avoid it,” and has gone on to outline his plans to completely segregate gay from straight troops.  This uninformed and frankly nasty attitude promotes a culture of otherness and, so far from progressing gay troops from inferiors to equals, will probably make them targets by setting them apart from the rest of their units.

On the other hand, since single housing is now proposed for those gay servicemen, it might actually end up being a little nicer than life in the closet!

John Sheehan, a retired army general from the United States, has blamed the lifting of a ban on gay troops in the Dutch army for the 1995 Bosnian massacre.

Serbian forces overwhelmed Dutch peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia fifteen years ago, leading to one of the largest genocides in Europe since World War II. Approximately 8,000 men and children were killed by Serbian forces.

Sheehan, speaking to a senate committee currently discussing a proposal to end the country’s ridiculous policy banning openly gay men and women from serving in the military, said that the Dutch would have prevented the Bosnian catastrophe if only they hadn’t “made a conscious effort to socialize their military,” adding “that includes open homosexuality.”

Roger Van de Wetering, a spokesperson for the Dutch Defence Ministry, dismissed the comments as “total nonsense:”

The whole operating in Srebrenica and the drama that took place over there was thoroughly investigated by Dutch and international authorities and none of these investigations as ever concluded or suggested a link between homosexual military personnel and the things that happened over there.

Well, duh!

• General blames gay Dutch troops in massacre [CBC News]

Bethany Smith, a lesbian seeking refugee status in Canada from the U.S., will get a second chance to have her case heard by the Immigration and Refugee Board after the Federal Court ruled that her previous plea was wrongfully dismissed.

Bethany, a 21 year old U.S. soldier, fled the U.S. in September 2007 over the institutionalized homophobia in the country’s army. Bethany says that other soldiers discovered she was a lesbian after seeing her hold hands with another woman at a shopping mall. Gays and lesbians are forbidden to serve openly in the U.S. army, so this information was used to harass, blackmail, and threaten her with violence—with no available recourse in the army’s administration.

The Immigration and Refugee Board originally rejected Bethany’s case in February, but will now give her a second chance with a different adjudicator. The Federal Court says the IRB should have taken into account “the particular environment” at Bethany’s Kentucky army base, including information that a gay man was murdered there in 1999 by fellow soldiers as he slept.

Considering Canada’s abysmal record on these sorts of cases, I don’t know how much of a chance Bethany has of getting full refugee status. Still, I wish her the best, as well as the speedy turfing of the U.S’s terrible Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and other forms of institutionalized homophobia!

• Lesbian U.S. deserter’s case must be reviewed: court [CBC News]
• Lesbian U.S. deserter appeals for refugee status [CBC News]

Yesterday marked 17-years since the reversal of CFAO 19-20, Canada’s shameful equivalent of the United State’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Before October 27, 1992, members of Canada’s armed forces suspected of being gay were put through internal investigations and fired, even if their service records were exemplary.

The United States has yet to follow suit. Despite a shortage of soldiers and an ongoing war, the U.S. continues to turn away—for no good reason—capable soldiers willing to risk their lives for their country. Canada, which still has combat soldiers on duty in Afghanistan, has 17 years of proof that all those crazy, crazy claims about sex-crazed soldiers and declining troop morale just aren’t a reality.

Here’s to 17 years of military equality, and to the ray of hope that the U.S. military will follow suit!

(Hat tip to James at Gay Persons of Color for alerting me to this important anniversary!)

• Canadian Forces: A lesson in gay inclusion [Chronicle Herald]

The United States Department of Defense is asking for more time before an end to the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military is considered. U.S. president Barack Obama had campaigned to repeal the ridiculous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which forbids gays from serving, but has since been silent on the issue.

Over 12,500 gay men and women have been discharged from the United States military under the gay-banning policy, including 219 since President Obama took office. So, while top advisors and the military are all pleading for a delay, my brain is pleading for a sane reason for why this issue could possibly be complicated enough to require all this extensive preparation.

• Military wants more time before gay ban ends [USA Today]
• 12,500 booted in ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ [Dayton Daily News]
• Gay community bitterly disappointed by Obama’s lack of action [Canadian Press]

Let’s forgo the mainstream news sources for today. It’s time for some blog dredgin’!

Writing for his online column at the North Star Writers Group, Gregory D. Lee, an army recruitment officer, posts an article entitled “Why Do Homosexuals Want to Serve in the Military? For Sex, Of Course.”

This should be a good one!

[...] you need to understand that homosexuals predominantly want to serve in the military in order to have access to people their own age with whom to engage in sex. It’s just that simple. It’s all about sex, and not about serving the nation.

Totally. Why should all those randy, randy gays bother with Internet hookups and the whole bar scene when they can ship off to Iraq and get some hot action in between the unspeakable horrors of war?

It is not unheard of to have a lesbian officer coerce a lower enlisted woman into engaging in lesbian sexual activity. “I’m an officer and you’re a private, who are they going to believe if you tell them I forced you to have sex with me?” Or two male soldiers go out on the town. One has too much to drink, and when they return to the barracks, he passes out in his buddy’s room. When he wakes up, his “buddy” is performing fellatio on him. 

Gee, we gays are sex-obsessed. I never realised. Just for fun, though, let’s try an exercise:

It is unheard of to have a straight, male officer coerce a lower enlisted woman in sexual activity. “I’m an officer and you’re a private, who are they going to believe if you tell them I forced you to have sex with me?” Or a male and female soldier goes out on the town. One has too much to drink…

That was fun!

Having openly gay men and women in close living quarters with heterosexuals would make straight soldiers uncomfortable, to say the least. The morale of units would decline almost immediately, and re-enlistments would most certainly suffer. 

Look, that’s not fair; we gays have apologised several times for being ceaseless joy vaccuums, sucking the morale from all forms of life. It’s awful, I admit, but we can’t help it. Just the other day, I went to have a lovely brunch and three patrons collapsed of malaise; the rest swore never to visit a cafe again. It’s unfortunate, but let’s move on, OK?

This is another example why liberals should never be in charge of national security.

Let’s not tell Gregory who the new guy in charge is just yet, m’kay?

Have a great monday, soldiers!