This Is Not Gay Liberation

 

It's gay pride season. This weekend is New York City's big gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride parade. I've gone almost every year since I've lived in New York City, over thirty years. My first Pride was 1977, before I lived here. In the middle I went to Pride in Chicago. I marched many of those years. For a while I was even a member of the official planning coalition, before it became a nonprofit corporation. Back in those days we called it a gay pride "march."

The gay world has been abuzz with what would seem to be a slew of victories. The repeal of DADT has brought gay pride to, of all places, the Pentagon, where the masters of war plot how to subvert and attack people around the world. Apparently they will be taking a few moments from piloting child-killing drones over Pakistan and Yemen to celebrate "our rich diversity," as the flyer above reads. Later this year there will be a celebration of the end of DADT at the Intrepid, the aircraft-carrier turned museum floating in the Hudson off a New York City pier. That is, if they can swab the decks free of the bloodstains of thousands of Vietnamese killed by the Intrepid's planes in its period of service in the American war of aggression against Vietnam in the 1960s. Look! A rainbow flag!

Corporate sponsors are big news this year: a whole bunch of dubious corporations from Wells Fargo to Target have rolled out those rainbow flags, and the gay community rejoices, apparently turning a blind eye to the actual, you know, business practices and social role of these corporations. Hey, they're pro gay!

And speaking of taking time off from piloting drones, President Obama, er, came out in support of marriage equality. Well, he came out personally as a supporter of gay marriage. The day after the lesbian and gay community of North Carolina was devastated by a brutally anti-gay referendum that the President failed to comment on. Did I mention he thinks marriage equality is a states rights issue so his personal opinion doesn't mean he will intervene in such state struggles in the future? Oh sure I understand the limits of his executive power. He has certainly made clear the limits of his moral authority. It might come as no surprise that the gay community, deeply distrustful of Obama, immediately jumped full force on his reelection bandwagon. Seemingly, the only gay voices continuing criticism of the president are those on the right tainted by the dogwhistle racism of the Republicans.

Oh and a new book came out, which I can't imagine myself reading, by a heterosexual woman I'd not heard of before named Linda Hirshman entitled "Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution." Yes, it seems we have won. The struggle for our civil rights is over! No doubt we are now approaching the same state of grace as all of "post-racial" America.

This needs to be said: This is not gay liberation.

I'm finding myself surprisingly pissed off this year. Lesbian and gay pride always seemed like an opportunity to take our star turn: to celebrate our place in the fabric of the city, in the fabric of society. To walk about openly without worry, armed with great numbers in mutual solidarity. It seemed to me that while it was not always an overtly political event, it certainly had the political subtext of bringing our own struggle for social justice to the same field of battle where all the other struggles are waged.

But this year it feels to me like the gay community is saying, "hey, we got ours!" I think the community understands the threat from the religious right: it's clear a large minority of people in the United States have no love for the gays. But I think the gay establishment, and hence a large segment of the community, has also been utterly seduced by those fluttering rainbow flags. Gay pride has literally been sold to corporations. And those who question the sale, or suggest that a pinkwashing sleight of hand is at work, are being silenced or marginalized.

What a sham it is that corporations are waving rainbow flags at the same time they're busting unions, taking back basic benefits like paid healthcare and time off, and generally engaging in the looting of society for their own financial gain.
 
For me, "gay liberation" has always been intimately tied to "the revolution." That is, one social justice struggle among many that got at the core nature of capitalist society and its divide-and-rule strategies and materially-based oppressions inherent in that politico-economic system. I always argued that victory for our struggle as gay people — deeply connected to the role of women in capitalism — was not possible in a capitalist society. I don't feel equipped to address that huge question head-on in this essay, but I have to say that what the gay community is experiencing right now doesn't feel like a victory to me. I suppose the end of certain forms of legal discrimination are an advance for a certain privileged layer of the community that may benefit many gay people up and down the class spectrum, but something feels hollow.

While semi-covert gay organizations quietly existed for years before the  legendary Stonewall rebellion, the mass gay civil rights movement has its roots in the social uproar of the 1960s and the radical movement against American involvement in Vietnam. It's no accident that the first militant gay organization, the Gay Liberation Front, was named in the spirit of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front, more commonly known as the Vietcong.

  

At its beginning the queer movement was a revolutionary movement. Perhaps the theory was undeveloped but the impulse was clear. One early group was even called STAR, or Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. And in its earliest days gay liberationists united with others who recognized the connections. While shamefully some forces on the left were slow to embrace the gay struggle, black and Latino revolutionaries in the same gritty urban centers as the multi-racial gay community understood a natural alliance. The Occupy movement neighborhood assembly I work in, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, just showed the extraordinary documentary film "Palante, Siempre Palante" about the Young Lords Party, roughly the revolutionary Puerto Rican equivalent of the Black Panther Party. The film tells how the Young Lords openly and proudly supported gay liberation.

The gay movement went on a long journey toward moderation and respectability. A trans-class movement, it's no particular surprise that today's mainstream "LGBT" organizations are solidly in the pocket of the Democratic Party. But when I see today's pride parades built around corporate sponsorship or the narrow focus on "what's good for the gays" to the exclusion of any other social justice concerns, I am reminded over and over that it hasn't always been this way. Once upon a time gay people were protesting militarist monstrosities like the Intrepid. Now our political leaders are throwing a party on it.

It's not widely enough circulated, but back in 1970 the Black Panther Party's Huey Newton gave a speech in which he touched on the women's and gay liberation movements. The Black Panthers are sadly maligned in historical memory: virtually massacred by government COINTELPRO terrorism, the Panthers are misremembered as being violent, misremembered as some kind of glorified retrograde gang. Nothing could be further from the truth and Newton's far-thinking words from 1970 help reveal this:

"Remember, we have not established a revolutionary value system; we are only in the process of establishing it. I do not remember our ever constituting any value that said that a revolutionary must say offensive things towards homosexuals, or that a revolutionary should make sure that women do not speak out about their own particular kind of oppression. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite: we say that we recognize the women's right to be free. We have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppresed people in the society.... And maybe I'm now injecting some of my prejudice by saying that "even a homosexual can be a revolutionary." Quite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary. When we have revolutionary conferences, rallies, and demonstrations, there should be full participation of the gay liberation movement and the women's liberation movement." 

The whole text is quite remarkable, far more advanced than the politics of much of the left at the time. This history of connected revolutionary struggles needs to be revisited.

In New York and San Francisco #OWS contingents will be marching in the parades. They'll be pointing out all the corporate pinkwashing that's going on. Mainstream gays have already suggested this act of elementary and obvious political education is "disruption." They have accused Occupy people of being "outsiders," as if no actually queer person could possibly reject the sale of gay pride to corporate America.

"Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you."

Fighting civil discrimination is good. But fighting for the liberation of society is better. Let's not lose sight of the prize at the end: it's not about queer people being free just to be like suburban "middle-class" heterosexuals, it's about freeing society from all forms of oppressive relations.

The celebration of that victory will take place on the ruins of the Pentagon and at the site of the Intrepid being broken down into scrap.

Happy gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer pride. The struggle continues.

DADT Repealed!

Played with the strategic wizardry of a chess master, President Obama today achieved one of his campaign promises, the repeal of the Clinton-era "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that was used to purge the American military of lesbians and gays. Coming down to the wire in the lame duck session of Congress, Obama's skill at compromise and building support paid off for a major item in the liberal agenda. Repealing DADT was a campaign slogan, then given more urgency in this year's State of the Union address. He completely lined the ducks up in a row: he organized his Department of Defense and military bigwigs to advocate for repeal, and then worked with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to come up with compromise language to suggest that repeal of the DADT law wouldn't imply immediate culture shock to the armed forces. Through a year of ups and downs, slow advances and setbacks, with the liberal and gay community constantly calling "foul" and suggesting Obama was selling them down the river, the final duck was lined up with his tax compromise that, signed and delivered, allowed him to bust Republican unity and swing several Republican senators over to his side. The vote today was historic, possibly the first piece of stand-alone gay civil rights legislation to pass through Congress. Along the way there was lobbying, backroom deals, protests, and howls of betrayal. As it is, implementation of the repeal is likely to be slow.

On the one hand I think it's important to recognize a civil rights advance, one that adds potential momentum to civil rights advances in other areas, especially employment non-discrimination. It's important to see this as a victory for Obama as well: just weeks after the midterm elections his maneuvering skills seem formidable. The fact that the right and center wings of the Republican party were just completely outmaneuvered is major. We'll see how this plays out after the new year when the House reverts to Republican control: we're not likely to see even minimally progressive legislation make it through there for a while. But I think it's also important to be reminded of what the repeal means: that gay people now have the equal right to kill and die for imperialism.

And this is not an abstraction: the U.S. remains engaged in, depending on how you count, at least two wars of aggression, and numerous questionable military engagements all over the world from Korea to Somalia. All those gay Arabic-language military translators who were fired over the last few years (and there were dozens), they will shortly be able to keep their jobs.... ensuring American and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. So as much as the extension of a democratic right is a victory, it remains incumbent on those of us on the side of peace to continue to advocate for the gay community to make wise choices. The presence of openly gay volunteer soldiers will not make these wars more just, nor make them go away. These wars are still wrong: don't enlist!

And if Obama's manipulation of the forces of government was a thing to behold, there is a caution for those on the left. He, as a force in the center, is likely to be successful in some ways that are not at all progressive. In that his strategic victories in the DADT fight make him stronger, there is the danger that it makes his repressive instincts stronger also. The Department of Justice has already made raids on leftists in the midwest, attempting to taint certain leftists with the tar of terrorism. His sabre-rattling over Korea and Iran should be watched with caution.

Still, a battle won. I'll take the good news with the bad.

(Graphic "I Want You To Die in a Foreign Desert for Corrupt Politicians...Don't Be An Idiot Don't Join up!" snagged from a comment on Queerty.)

A War Resister's Plea

What does it mean to be committed to peace, to be fully committed to resisting the folly of war? I found an amazing document. It's an article written by my father, Peter Horst, during the time he was fighting the draft as a conscientious objector in the late 1950s. Frustratingly missing the first two pages and an unknown number of concluding pages, it details the basis for his refusal of military service. It seems to date from late 1956 or 1957, written either right before or during his chosen alternative civilian service with the American Friends Service Committee.

He believed that what he called "Brotherly Love" could be elevated to the moral principle of religion, and that this devotion to living out what might be to some an abstraction was to him a call to refuse actions that violated his beliefs. The first part of the document I found is a measured theological defense of what he called the religion of brotherly love. He cites Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism without suggesting that his beliefs were the doctrines of any single faith. But what I'd like to present here is a section toward the end on the reasoning behind rejecting, behind resisting, violence and war.

I know that he defended his conscientious objection for years and years in the courts; I assume that this document was written to support his legal case by codifying his position. I find the document not only personally inspiring but tremendously relevant. In discussions on The Cahokian and elsewhere on the meaning of war in a historical sense and on confronting the challenges of today's wars in an absolute real sense, I find much here that validates my own beliefs. And above all, at a time when the military's proscriptions against gays may finally end with the possible repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), this document reinforces my view of why as important as it is to struggle against discrimination, struggling against militarism and war should be a moral imperative that leads justice-seeking people to reject the military itself. Here is an extended excerpt:

WHY I MUST REFUSE TO BE A SOLDIER
by Peter Horst

I believe that one must love one's enemies, and that by so doing they will cease to be enemies, since Love begets Love. If a person in a situation of violence attempts to use Love as his weapon, and fails, I believe it is the fault of imperfect use, not the fault of the weapon. In the case of an individual citizen in a nation committed to the use of violence, it is possible that he might never face the enemy to test that weapon, especially in this age of long-range electronic and atomic weapons. But to regard the belief as worthless, simply because other weapons are in official use, would show a lack of faith in the true worth of Love.

Military weapons, unlike the religious belief of Love, have been tried, and proved worthless by the number of wars to end wars in this century alone. But Love has converted enmity to Love in many cases: Christ's crucifixion, Gandhi's crusade in India, countless individual cases of the use of non-violent defense, have all proved that Love is a power excelling hatred.

Committed to Brotherly Love, I must therefore refuse to kill. I believe an army is organized in direct opposition to my religious values, and promotes only hatred and violence. Therefore I must refuse to participate in any military activity. It is foolish to think that an army can make room for Love of enemy. Even though there are non-combatant positions open in an army, they only further the military cause; therefore I refuse to accept any military position.

My belief in the power of Love is such that, when ordered to act in opposition to it, I must refuse. I do not deny allegience to the state, but because I believe there is nothing superior to Love, and that nothing of value cancome from contradicting it, my duty to it takes precedence over any other.

This is true not only in a situation where the state makes a demand upon me, but in any case where a course of action is demanded that violates my belief. To cite the traditional case, if my wife were attacked by a maniac, or any person bereft of reason and therefore unable to be dealt with reasonably, I would not take his life in defense. I would be willing to use a minimum of non-violent force to restrain him, realizing that he could then be dealt with therapeutically. If he were dead, there would be no dealing with him at all. In this instance, there is no reason to assume I must assent to war. In war, one does not not forgive, but murders his trespasser, and his family and friends as well; the victor then imposes his own order upon the vanquished.

In case of attack by a sane person, or an army, I would use no force beyond the reasonable power of Love. I am fully aware that my practice and knowledge in this is limited, and that I would therefore be liable to injury or death. I accept this as necessary, until the art of Love is fully perfected. Because violence is so dangerous, I do not think there is any excuse for using it. Neither self-defense nor defense of loved ones is sufficient cause for violating the rule of Love. If I were to deny my religion and make an exception in some instance by returning violence for violence, there would be that much less chance for the ultimate worth of my belief to be shown.

There can be no world peace and security without loving forgiveness, and will never be as long as men consider anything more valuable than Brotherly Love. I do not believe the practice of this can be put off into the future, until some less 'dangerous' time. I believe the danger of violence far outweighs the danger of placing one's defense in the practice, even though not perfected, of Love.

I have shown that my religion rests on a loving and peaceful attitude in myself. It may be worthwhile to show a few of the resulting reasons why and how I believe in non-violence.

A strong reason stems from World War II. I believe that a man is, and must be, personally responsible for what he does. The Allied governments expressed this same belief when they initiated the Nurenburg trials for war criminals. They announced that each soldier and citizen was personally responsible for carrying out orders later defined as criminal and atrocious. It is thus impossible for a person to subordinate the demands of his individual conscience to those of the collective state, since he himself, and not the majority of citizens, must answer for every life he takes, every order he follows that results in what the victors can later define as a "war crime." My conscience makes it impossible for me to accept the responsibility for what a soldier must do; therefore I must refuse to be a soldier.

Every war is one of defense, and both sides claim to be defending. Hitler said so, Tojo said so, and we said so. Israel said so and launched an attack [in 1956 --ish]; Egypt said so and fought back; England said so and joined in, along with France whose purpose was also "defense." A country uses the weapons it believes in and has on hand; thus it is likely that this country may be forced to resort for defense to the atomic weapons she has specialized in. In contradiction of this, I will defend myself only as far as Love will allow. If necessary, I would prefer to die for a cause I hold equally as high as that held by whoever chooses to bomb me, or whoever choose to go to war for whatever country he calls his own. I will not violate my religion by seeking to destroy my enemy, or by helping those of my own country whose different belief leads them to bear arms.

I am not willing to be defended, or to defend anyone else, by a series of Nagasakis and Hiroshimas. Aside from being contradictory to Brotherly Love, the price to be paid in such cases makes defense worthless. Some have called our past dropping of the A-bomb, and the possibility that we might drop a bigger one in the future, the lesser of two evils. The greater evil is supposed to be the occupation and plundering of our land by the enemy, and the death of some of our own people. My religion teaches different values. All men are to be loved equally. It is not a lesser evil to kill a Russian than for a Russian to kill an American. Human lives, not nationalities, are involved. If an A-bomb were dropped on Detroit, it would only compound the evil and destruction to retaliate in kind. The only way to diminish the evil is to forgive, and to cultivate Love.

(The above graphic is the logo of the venerable War Resister's League, a pacifist organization founded in 1923. I don't believe my father was affiliated with that group but he did work with the Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors.)

Happy Cannon Fodder Day!

I almost forgot what day it was. In honor of Veteran's Day, aka Cannon Fodder Day, here's pop singer Scott Walker's devastating "Hero of the War" from 1969.

He's a hero of the war
All the neighborhood is talkin' 'bout your son
Mrs. Reiley get his medals
Hand them 'round to everyone
Show his gun to all the children in the street
It's too bad he can't shake hands or move his feet

He's a hero of the war
You can see his picture in the local news
Mrs. Reiley seems the girl next door is nowhere to be found
Once you couldn't keep that boy from hangin' 'round
Never mind dear, you're with your mum once more

He's a hero of the war
Like his dad he gave his life the war before
It was tragic how you almost died of pain when he was born
With no husband there beside you through it all
Ring the bell if you get hungry or you fall

You're a hero of the war
Why those teardrops on your cheek? it's so absurd
Feelin' empty it's the emptiness of heroes like your son
And what made him leave his mother for a gun
Driven forward driven back and nothing more

He's a hero of the war

War: resist it. Don't enlist.

Obama's Gay Problem

The following is based on a comment I made in a discussion on the Joe.My.God. blog about the Obama justice department choosing to appeal the recent court ruling overturning DADT.

At the state of the union address this year President Obama urged Congress to repeal DADT. It passed the House, and then stalled in the Senate, eventually being voted down, opposed by all the Republicans and two Democrats, toward the end of the recent Senate session. Meanwhile Obama mobilized his chiefs of staff to oppose DADT, while also endorsing a study of the impact of repealing DADT on the armed services that looked to some as a delaying tactic. I have written elsewhere on The Cahokian on my mixed feelings on this issue. Meanwhile a lawsuit against DADT brought by, of all things, gay Republicans during the Bush adminstration finally bore the fruit of a federal judge ruling that it was unconstitutional, and immediately nullifying its enforcement throughout the American armed forces. Despite the fact that Obama has repeatedly stated his opposition to DADT, his justice department decided to defend the law of the land and appeal the decision banning DADT.

Immediately many in the gay community, especially its highly vocal blogosphere, have cried foul. Obama has even met vocal opposition to this move at town hall meetings for the upcoming midterm elections. He responded by affirming his intention to end DADT "on his watch." Many in the gay blogosphere are now calling him a homophobe, a failure, a liar, and worse.

I acknowledge this is frustrating and confounding. But all this crap about Obama being a homophobe is a conspiracy theory no different than the ones the right wing is spinning. Many in the gay community are caught up looking for simple answers to complicated problems. They're being swept up in the same know-nothing anti-intellectual media shitstorm that the teabaggers are swimiming in. But there is no actual evidence that Obama is a homophobe. The gay community has hurt feelings, and some in the blogosphere are quite shrill in their accusations. But the gay blogs tend to avoid reporting on how some Obama supporters defend his strategy of seeking pure legislative overturn for DADT...and contrary to the additional conspiracy theories floating around the blogs, not everybody who believes that Obama is actually committed to what he says he is on this instance is a paid agent of the Democratic National Committee or the mainstream gay lobbying organization the Human Rights Campaign.

I'm not sure I agree that the president has chosen the correct strategy here. I freely admit I don't understand the ramifications of either possible path based on the DADT court ruling. But I am absolutely certain that the response of so many in the gay blogosphere is way off base.

I think it's quite interesting in a perverse way that this discussion has been going on since 2007. While Obama had a lot of gay support, large sections of the gay community lined up behind candidate Hillary Clinton, and bitterness endured past the Democratic primaries. By and large the sides haven't changed much: many in the gay community unhappy with Obama now were unhappy with him them. It's been established that white men are the constituency least behind Obama; this is mirrored in the gay white male community though it's certainly not true that the only gay people having huge problems with Obama are gay white men. But I do think the distrust between the white gay community and the black community does color this continuing distrust and worse that many gays have with him. I've read gay men, for instance, suggest that Obama learned to hate gays at the hands of "anti-gay preacher" Jeremiah Wright, not knowing that Obama's old and now-renounced spiritual mentor was in fact thoroughly pro-gay, wrongly assuming that he was just another anti-gay Christian preacher.

Let's look at the past, at the things that pissed us in the gay community off before. Donnie McClurkin, a hugely popular gospel star who also happens to be a bigot: Obama bridged his fans and supporters and us for votes. End of story; we won that when Obama got elected. Megachurch leader Rick Warren: The guy made a bumbling inarticulate speech at the inauguration and now, as an acknowledged Obama supporter, we haven't heard too much from him in two years; in fact he was even shamed into denouncing his friends in Uganda. Obama bridged his fans and supporters and us because, like it or not, he's all of our president. I think we won that one, too.

DADT, DOMA [the defense of marriage act which bans gay marriage], ENDA [the employment nondiscrimination act which would ban discrimination in hiring]: Some strategic choices were made here. I would rather this whole fight was over ENDA not DADT. I'm not sure who to thank for that, HRC maybe. But even the one thing that as many point out has 75% popular support, repeal of DADT, wasn't able to get through Congress. Because of the Republicans, not Obama, not the Democrats. And the blogosphere is saying this is just SIMPLE? Are they fucking nuts? For that matter can we imagine getting a bill calling for ending discrimination against transpeople through the current senate? Really???

I believe Obama honestly opposes DOMA. I also believe there is not a snowball's chance in hell of touching it in congress. DOMA is hugely popular on the right and center, and even Hillary Clinton wasn't for its blanket repeal.

I don't think any of us foresaw the massive teabagger reaction to Obama's election. We all thought, oh Obama can win, the country must have changed magically from the nightmare of the Bush years. Well maybe it didn't. It's frustrating. It's confounding. But this country is a mess. And coming up with lefty conspiracy theories to match the right wing ones is just stupid. And that is all the notion that Obama is a homophobe is, it's a conspiracy theory.

I HATE Obama's foreign policy. But it's pretty much what I expected, it's what American presidents do. I want socialized medicine. But I also want a beach house in Puerto Rico. I hate the money that was given to banks. But I'm pretty sure I would hate living in a cardboard box and going to breadlines more. I'm sorry Obama is a flawed human being. I wish he was still going to Jeremiah Wright for advice. But things could be so so much worse. I remain unregretful of how I spent my vote. I wish there was a Democratic Socialist party out there to give the Democrats and Republicans a run for the money. But there's just not.

These are frustrating, dangerous times. There's an election in a couple weeks. I'd rather see a frustrating party that struggles to get things done remain holding the reigns of power than the teabagger movement. I think that's a simple choice. It is not a blanket endorsement of the Democratic Party. But when the shitstorm is swirling around on election day and everybody's pissed off at Obama, even if some of the people are pissed off from the left and some from the right, when the teabaggers win we're all gonna be swimming in shit and nobody's gonna care who the stink came from.

(Photo snagged from the CS Monitor)

Repeal DADT - Repeal the "Wars on Terror"

Today the motion to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) is supposed to come before the Senate, if the Republicans do not filibuster it. DADT was passed by Congress during the Clinton Administration; originally intended as a vehicle to end discrimination against gay people in the American armed forces, it quickly became the vehicle for witch-hunting gays out of the Army. It's a campaign promise by Obama he has found to be a veritable minefield of opposition. Despite numerous polls suggesting a vast majority of Americans support the repeal of DADT and support gays and lesbians being able to serve in the military, this point of view is not apparently shared by a majority of politicians.

While I need to say that I am of course opposed to DADT, as I am opposed to all discriminatory laws, I need to also say that my heart is not in this fight. It is tragic to see, in this day and age, so many right-wingers question the humanity of gay people. The right-wingers are much more worried about the sensitivities of bigots who might be forced to accept gay people in their midst -- and surprise, we're already there -- than they are about discrimination against an entire group of people. But as gay activist/blogger Michael Petrelis frequently reminds us, the fight against DADT is not taking place in a vacuum. It's taking place in a time when the United States is involved in wars of aggression; wars of aggression that gay Americans should know better than to want to join up and fight in.

I've been reading a novel about the Russian Revolution written shortly after it happened by someone who witnessed it (and later broke from supporting it but that's another story). It's clear that what the Russian revolutionaries led by Lenin had in their favor was their support of peace and their opposition to continuing to fight the tragic and senseless First World War. Rejecting calls for hollow patriotism that benefitted only the top layers of society, the Bolsheviks called for people to recognize the humanity of those on both sides of an arbitrarily drawn battleline. Their commitment to this fundamentally decent point of view gave them the popular support they needed at a crucial time to overthrow the rule of aristocrats, bankers, corporations, and militarists. While what happened thereafter is emminently debatable, it seems that this is a lesson modern Americans -- especially a minority treated as unfairly as gay people -- ought to remember.

While we are a long way in this country from having anything as revolutionarily effective as Lenin's Bolsheviks, we're not a long way from taking a moral stand against the wars that have taken so many innocent lives and trashed the world economy. It is disappointing that the gay community which has mobilized to defend gay veterans kicked out of the army and mobilized to fight DADT has not also mobilized to take a stand for peace.

To all those gay Arabic linguists who were expelled from their service (and there were many including DADT posterboy Dan Choi) I say, use your skills for sowing peace not war. To the pro-gay cultural figures like Lady Gaga who have become spokespeople against DADT I say, use your powers for an even greater good: advocate not only for civil rights for Americans but for the civil rights of people suffering from America's self-centered aggressive military policies. If gay people want to take a step to fight anti-gay bigotry in the Muslim world, take a loud and open stand against the violence that turns so many Muslims against Americans.

Back in the days of the draft there was a profoundly moral choice: conscientious objection. There is no draft today but we still have consciences that should be objecting to what is being done in our names. Gay people have no business fighting wars like this endless so-called War on Terror. Know that even if DADT is repealed, as I hope it is, its effect on injustice is blunted by the gay activist community's failure to connect its issues to the cause of peace.

UPDATE: The bill was filibustered this afternoon by the Republicans plus two Democrats (and a third, Harry Reid, who voted nay for strategic reasons so he could reopen the issue later). Meanwhile, someone in the offices of a Republican Georgia senator has gone on the gay blog Joe.My.God. to post the charming message "All Fags Must Die." Welcome to Amerikkka.

Do Ask - Don't Kill

My friend David tipped me to this blog article with an awesome photo from San Francisco: "I wish our queer organizations worked to end war instead of for my right to be out while I kill or am killed in one...It may be a civil right to be in the military but it's a human right to be free from illegal wars." Awesome sentiment. Thanks to "Democracy Sometimes" for this photo.

Check out my own opinion on DADT repeal here.

Don't Ask - Don't Tell? No. Don't Enlist!

This week, following President Obama's lead, the US Senate held hearings about repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that congress enacted under President Clinton. DADT, as it's called, was originally meant to reform anti-gay policies in the military, but in the end became license for a witch-hunt in the armed services resulting in the discharge of thousands of lesbian and gay servicemembers.

It was pretty amazing to hear figures like Admiral Mullen call for the extending of this civil right to lesbians and gays. Even General Colin Powell has now come out for its repeal, and he was instrumental in the passage of the law in the first place. Typically, Republican dinosaurs like John McCain and a host of social conservatives have defended the law, some like war criminal Oliver North with outlandish claims.

It should go without saying that discriminatory laws like DADT should be repealed. That's basic equal rights. But for me, the real question is why would any self-respecting lesbian or gay man want to join the armed forces? Why would anybody want to join the armed forces?

I'm not stupid. I understand that the military is a job with benefits in an era when jobs with benefits are scarce. I wish I had a job with benefits myself. I understand that many people join the military out of a desire to contribute to society, to defend the nation against attack, to defend their families against future danger. I get these things. But I think that the good will that leads some people to join the military is misplaced; the military, by its very nature, bends that good will to its own ends.

I question those who want military careers; and I question those in the gay community who make this civil right greater priority than others our communities also lacks. I question making DADT-repeal higher priority than solving other issues facing us -- as Americans with our trainwreck economy and nightmarish healthcare system. It's one thing to say that DADT repeal might be possible given the turn of the top brass' opinions, or to suggest that government should be able to reform more than one societal crisis at a time, but as for my values, DADT reform ranks very very low.

My father, Peter Horst, was drafted in the 1950s. The Korean war was over; he was not threatened with shipment to some futile overseas war. He refused his draft notice saying that military service was incompatible with his religious beliefs, religious beliefs based on "love" being the highest human calling. When asked what religion he belonged to, he replied that these were his own personal beliefs. A long law suit ensued, which, I believe, went all the way to the Supreme Court.

The U.S. District Court fot Michigan, in acquitting Peter Horst
of the charge of refusal to accept induction into the armed forces, interpreted the statutory definition of religious training and belief to mean "any belief, orthodox, or unorthodox." The court also held that Congress did not intend "that a registrant's claim of exemption—must carry with it any concept of fear of religious sanctions, such as punishment after death or excommunication from the church ..." The court ruled that the appeal board had misinterpreted the meaning of religious training and belief in denying the defendant a CO. classification because his description of the Supreme Being as "God's Love" raised doubts in the minds of the appeal board members that the defendant's claim was based upon belief in a Supreme Being as envisaged by the draft law."

His conscientious objection back in 1957, and his commitment to choosing alternative service (which he did with the American Friends Service Committee in Mexico; my birthplace) makes refusal of military service something I consider a family legacy. I, myself, was luckily born a small handful of years shy of being subjected to the draft for Vietnam.

Vietnam was, however, the backdrop of my childhood. I remember the nightly casualty reports. I remember the footage on nightly TV. I remember the peace marches. And if you think Iraq or Afghanistan is a war, with relatively few American casualties and the civilian victims of American weapons largely kept off camera, Vietnam was a WAR writ large in the media. Blood and death were everywhere in print and TV; and the casualty figures from that war make today's conflicts pale by comparison. As I've written elsewhere in this blog, the best thing about the Vietnam War is the way it ended, with the route of the US forces who didn't belong there in the first place.


Times have changed and the draft is gone. Ironically, being gay -- or claiming to being gay -- was one of the time-honored ways for getting out of being used as involuntary cannon-fodder. Now people join the military more or less voluntarily; economic crises and coercive video-game military recruiting efforts notwithstanding.

But what does it really mean to join the armed forces? The military is the brute force of American foreign policy overseas.
It is the instrument through which the United States forces its will upon the other nations of the world. Its defensive capabilities are secondary to its offensive capabilities: witness the US response to 9/11. All those brave men and women who signed up to defend the US from attack by terrorists were then cynically used as instruments in the utterly unprovoked aggression that was the US attack on Iraq.

Much has been made over the dozens of gay Arabic-trained linguists discharged from Pentagon service. One could look at this as stupidity on the part of the government that could use more Arabic speakers. But I look at this from a different perspective: the utter corruption of wanting to sell one's knowledge of Arabic to the subversion of Arab nations and the subjugation of Arab peoples to the will of US foreign policy; policy which despite some of President Obama's more pacific and diplomatic statements remains fundamentally aggressive.

I recognize there is a cultural gulf here. I know people who are veterans; I know others who are in the reserve. I'm not saying these are bad people. But what I'm trying to say here is that just as we gay people have fought for a transformation in our relationship to society as a whole, so all Americans need to fight for a transformation of American consciousness as a whole.

The big lie here is that military service is a job. That killing people on the orders of a giant machine is a job. That having a "job" like that absolves one of the personal responsibility of holding life-affirming values. American soldiers are brainwashed to crush their own sense of self in subordination to the needs of that armed machine; to enable them to do horrible things to (foreign) people on demand without staining their consciences. This might be sound military thinking, I don't know. But what I do know is that such sound military thinking is antithetical to my values. The lives of Americans in the military are sacrificed daily on an obscene imperialist altar. The troops -- regular people like you and me -- are trained to take the right and duty to decide who among the regular people in front of them -- only a little less like you and me -- might be killed. It doesn't have to be this way.

National service shouldn't be channelled into the military-industrial complex. People who want to defend the ones they love shouldn't be taught to abandon their own moral compasses; shouldn't be made to behave like trained attack dogs.

Why is the military leading relief efforts in earthquake-struck Haiti? Why are people who signed up to guard the US against attack being shipped off to invade other nations? When the US sends its drone aircrafts to spy on and assassinate people across the globe, what right does the US have to execute people -- suspected terrorists or no -- without benefit of judge or jury? If you're the one being attacked, how is sitting in an office building and being attacked by murderous hijackers wielding a jet plane any different than sitting in a shack in Pakistan and being attacked out of the blue by a lethally armed model airplane? Our shared humanity should be our moral compass, and we shouldn't have to set that aside when we want to give something back to our country.

No matter how many gay people are allowed to eventually join the military, it will never be an army of lovers. It's just not its nature. So Ask! Tell! But don't enlist!

(A note on the art: the top picture of soldiers wearing makeup is from the Revolutionary Beijing Opera "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" of Chinese Cultural Revolution fame; the picture of the soldier in a dress is of course Corporal Klinger of the M*A*S*H TV show).