Editorial
Editorial
Absence Makes the Heart Grow...
It's
been what I refer to as "a tough month." And I mean personally,
for me – not even considering the political picture with nuclear
options in the Senate over reactionary judicial nominees (all a rehearsal
for when the first Supreme Court Justice dies or resigns), international
wars, famine, and verbal attacks by right-wing anti-gay Fristians. Not
even considering the discovery of a slippery piece of Bible-misusing propaganda
on the front lawn of the Community Center.
When your family is away to tend to
their family emergencies, nothing seems quite right in the world. Not
even with email and phone calls. Not when the distance is more than you
can drive in a day – or even two.
As I was bemoaning my bereft status
because my spouse went to Wisconsin – for three weeks! – to
help her increasingly frail mom move toward assisted living, the thought
came to me: however bad this feels to me, it must feel a thousand times
worse to any gay man or lesbian whose partner is serving in the homophobic
military in Afghanistan or Iraq or Colombia or any of the many places
where U.S. servicemembers come under fire.
These folks are away much longer than three
weeks. They're hot, cold, dirty, tired, scared, hungry, gritty with dust
and sand, and paranoid as hell, because they can't let it slip even to
their best unit buddies that the person they hope is waiting for them
to return, the person they miss the most is the same sex they are.
Yes, they chose this career. Yes,
they made this bed in which they lie. Their reasons are complicated: the
desire to be part of something bigger, the wish to serve their country,
the simple need for a job and training and promised money for college,
the craving for a ticket out of a small town and/or away from a stifling
family of origin, and other reasons I couldn't begin to guess at or describe.
Yes, they could get out of the military
– minus all the benefits they'd hoped to accrue over a 20-year stint,
if they survive – simply by announcing to the nearest senior officer
that they are gay or lesbian.
Or maybe not. As long as U.S. military
forces are continuously deployed in dangerous zones – whether in
the service of oil barons or empire builders – commanders sometimes
ignore the military's insistence that gay men and lesbians are not covered
by its own "stoploss" order. Gay men and lesbians are admissible
as cannon fodder, but not peacetime employees. So maybe they can't get
out of the military right now, even if they disclose their orientation
and the sex of the partner waiting back home.
I have a long history of being against
wars – while I was in high school I started demonstrating against
the American War (which is what the Vietnamese call it) of the 1960s and
beyond. The issues were so clear, so easy then. Anyone who joined the
military must want to kill without compunction or remorse, I thought.
They don't know what to do without an order, and they never ever get asked
whether they agree. So I thought then.
Without doubt there were some military
folks like that, whether drafted or volunteers. And there are still –
as witness the torture of Iraqi citizens held in squalid conditions; as
witness inhumane treatment of Afghanis held without charges or trials
in the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
There were also some soldiers, sailors,
and aviators then who were brave and bright and fought more to save their
friends than for any policy – ideological or imperial. And there
many servicemembers like that now.
For whatever reasons, these gay men
and lesbians are in the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the
Coast Guard. Many of them are far away from loved ones they can't talk
about or talk openly to. They can't write of their love to their lovers,
can't risk relaxing their guard.
And their lovers don't get the support
that military wives and husbands get. There are no support groups for
them, no military networks of officers' wives watching out for the gay
families left behind. There's only doubt, loneliness, fear, and the need
to keep busy. For some there may be consolations in the beds and arms
of here-now flings. And that may even be okay with the absent partner.
But still, there's the worry, always the worry about injury or death coming
calling on your loved one in a war zone far away.
And there's the silence that must
be maintained...
Until the nation comes to its senses
and reaches across the false divide between straight and gay and embraces
the humanity of us all – pacifist and warrior, family member and
orgiast. All of us get lonely and scared when our loved ones are far away.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell is immoral and
must be repealed. The Iraq war is immoral: bring the troops home.
Euan Bear,
Editor