“No Doubt” Forces Stretched Too Thin
“There's no doubt that there has been for many, many years a strain on our forces; that that strain has caused repeated tours,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recently when asked if Secretary Gates will reduce discharges under DADT.
The big news last week of course was that President Obama announced he will send another 30,000 service members to Afghanistan, bringing the total number of U.S. troops to 100,000. Let us state the obvious: Some of those newly deployed troops are gay.
As if going to war wasn't bad enough, they will be entering an ugly silence, forced to live under an oppressive law. Women are strictly prohibited from discussing what they did over the weekend with their girlfriend -- no talk of movies or dinner together. They either have to shut up or put on an "I-like-boys" charade.
Yet our forces remain strained...
SLDN will be working hard to scrap this law next year to end the additional burden 65,000 LGBT service members have to live -- and die -- under.
12-08-09 By Kevin Nix and Paul DeMiglio, SLDN Communications |
1 Comments
Comments for this entry are closed.Bill on December 09, 2009 at 02.20 pm
Yes—and if good estimates are correct that 2.5% of service persons are gay, that means 2,500 deployed to the war zone in Afghanistan. A few will be caught in the DADT net, but by far the majority will serve with honor, competence and silence—being partially deprived of 3/5 of the 1st Amendment Constitutional rights they are sworn to defend: speech, assembly, petition. Even more absurd, many will be known as gay and fully accepted by their straight peers. DADT could end overnight if their superiors would demand Generals McChrystal and Petraeus fully support all their troops and all the families of those troops.