Whew... also: ALLELUIA!

Relief is sweet, but the joy of motherhood is sweeter. The long, dreadful, wracking, agonizing, uncertain, plodding, itchy wait is over, and adoption is reified. It's no longer the secret we hold close to our vests. I can talk about it now, everywhere, and I do, though I suspect that will slow as it becomes less a recent happening and more a fact of our lives. I feel relieved of my burdens, of the wait, of the disappointments, and I never knew how heavy those were until I laid them down. I'm bursting to tell it from the top of the world, to shout every last one of the alleluias that are elbowing each other for space in my heart.

So, the quick version? There isn't one. I've been more moved by this process than I ever anticipated, and I expected roiling passions of joy, fear, pain, anticipation... and I tried to leave room in my expectations for the unexpected, too. This all started two years ago when Rose and I decided we wanted to have kids. Or, rather, to act on that decision. There were those weird, tentative conversations where we asked each other who wanted to carry the baby, and those odd visits to the sperm donor followed by even more awkward weeks of waiting to see if it had worked. And always the disappointment followed. The crushing, hope-stealing feeling that accompanies the first cramps when I got my period instead of a positive pregnancy test. And the weariness that settles in when a year has gone by and you're still running on that hamster wheel.

Then you suddenly have white lab coats in the middle of your most personal business, people contact you about financing procedures and whether they can fax or e-mail your test results. And some go on like that for some time for good or ill, but Rose and I did not. We might have, but I got some really great advice from my awesome middle sister. With the threat of mitochondrial disease soon to be confirmed in the family tree, she recommended adopting. Rose and I hadn't really considered adoption yet, but from our first conversation, it quickly became center stage in our world.

I racked up heaps of 2 AM bedtimes researching agencies that work with gay couples, international adoption, domestic infant adoption, foster adoption, financing adoption, bonding, and attachment disorder in adoption. I had fun with it, in a harrowing way. It's like trying to pick a college: I knew it was vitally important to pick a good one, but it was all so detached, none of it real or personal yet, and even the mountain of rejections was just water off the duck's back. It was all glossy brochures and slick websites at that point, nothing in it to prick the heart.

By January of this year we had found two agencies to investigate. In April of this year we chose our agency because their financial policies worked best for us. It sounds callous, but so much of what these agencies do is regulated by the state, the chief differences among them are the ratio of placed babies to waiting families and how they manage the money. Hope Cottage is where those glossy brochures started their slow transformation into our baby.

After we chose, we had to be screened. And we were screened like the janitors at CIA headquarters. There were fingerprint cards, and questionnaires. We explained ourselves, our families, our childhoods, adolescences, adulthoods, how we became who we are, how we found each other and become us. We were interviewed separately and together, our home was inspected, we provided photographs and floorplans, immunization records for our dogs, blood tests and Tuberculosis tests, cholesterol measurements... It was as thorough an application process as the Air Force Academy's, and they screened me like a patio door, as I recall. All that took us to early August, and then we were "on the list" and waiting.

I just don't know what to say about the wait, because "it was hard" is the best I can do right now, and it's woefully inadequate. It's something like the dead tedium of sitting in the kitchen in the cold dark, waiting for the coffee to percolate, and screaming at the stove to hurry. Nothing is happening as far as you can tell, but every once in a while, that splash of almost-coffee up into the percolator lid lets you know that soon, good things will arrive. Those little splashes of coffee in the percolator lid came in the form of phone calls from the agency, asking if we wanted to be referred, to have our profile shown to someone looking for parents for their baby. Over the four months, we got two of those calls, and neither of them worked out, but they kept us focused on the percolator for signs of action.

Nearly two weeks ago now, Dec. 10, we got a referral call full of more promise. A hospital referral has always been my preference, and this was one. A baby girl had been born in the wee hours of the day and needed a home. Her birthmother was well and healthy, she was well and healthy, they were going to discharge her from the hospital the next morning and show profiles to the birthmother. Did we want to be shown? Rose was out of town but I didn't even need to call and consult her. This was our perfect situation, and our social worker thought it looked very good for us, something she'd never told us before. Four months of waiting were no competition for the intense anticipation crammed into that one night, wanting so badly to hear the phone ring, dreading that it would fall apart just like the others.

The next morning, I was a zombie with a phone-shaped dent in my cheek, but calm. Rose was pacing her hotel room in Austin like a cranky old lion in a zoo who knows someone is about to chuck a steak over the wall. At 12:30 Saturday, our social worker called to give us the news... we'd been selected, would we like to see photos of the baby? By then, Rose had gotten too impatient to sit alone in her hotel and had checked out and loaded up. I was gripping my heart hard with both hands to keep from throwing it to this child I'd never met. Uncertainty made our path slippy, kept us fearful and guarded, but joy bubbled up at every turn. We still had to wait for the birthmother to relinquish the baby, but we had the promise of pictures, the hope of a meeting with her if the foster mom was available.

Every phone call after that was torture. We checked our e-mail for pictures obsessively, and we'd both spasm in unison whenever the phone rang. The disappointment when it turned out to be anyone other than our agency turned us snappish, but we kept coming back to hope somehow. Another night crammed full of sleeplessness and antsy conversation in the dark and checking our e-mail over, and over, and over again came and went and passed us well into the next day. To help pass the time, my awesome middle sister took me out for some therapeutic baby shopping. Rose and her sister did the same, and Rose's inner gay man, Emmitt, popped up to help them pick out a Christmas outfit for a girl we'd never even met.

Sunday evening around 6 we got word in an e-mail that the birthmother had signed the relinquishment. Unless and until she had signed that, everything was just fluff wrapped around a dream. She could choose to parent the baby and we could go back to the list and back to waiting. But she didn't. And the photos arrived, revealing one beautiful, perfect tiny baby. That was about the time my heart wriggled out of my grip and went flying to her crib.

From there, it was a whirlwind. The only obstacle between us and our daughter was the relinquishment from the birthfather, but he couldn't be found. In one conversation, we'd hear that everything looked good and placement might happen a little early; in another, we'd hear that the birthmother might be obfuscating and that we'd be delayed while the search for him continued. The timeline and the plan were doing fair imitations of Mexican jumping beans, and our hearts with them. I called my awesome baby sister and sobbed out my fear that he'd pop up at the last minute and carry our daughter away from us. And then I put my game face on and went to the agency to meet her for the first time.

It was Monday, three days after she first entered our consciousness, and we were able to arrange a visit. She was soft, and sweet, and snuggly, and sleepy, and she filled our noses with baby smell and our hearts with shaky hope. I fed her, Rose rocked her back to sleep. That hour was one of the best of my life and it went so fast I barely recall it. We took lots of pictures and asked lots of questions. The foster mother cares for infants in just such situations for a couple of agencies in town and she was just amazing. The folks at Hope Cottage call her The Baby Whisperer, and I believe she merits the name.

More phone calls, more meetings with social workers, more jumping the timeline, more palpitations and flat dread on our side, more welling hope, and we had one more visit. This time, Tuesday, we had a match meeting with the birth mother. She was so quiet, but very sweet, and she handled herself well in that gawky, tenuous situation. For the first time in my life I regret that I don't watch horror films, because that was the only thing she talked at any length about, and it was to one of the social workers who shares her appreciation for the genre. After the visit with our birthmother, we had some shared time with our daughter, and then some time with just us. It was devastating to have to walk out of there that day and leave her behind! We knew the only thing remaining was a go-ahead from the lawyer certifying that the birthfather search had been diligent enough and we could proceed without actually locating him.

A whole other kind of terror stalked that night, because with everything going so well in all other aspects of the placement, we were petrified that the birthfather would show up at the last minute and send us back to the list. I know our daughter is better off with us than with someone who didn't want her, but I struggled with conflicting wishes for this man. I wanted him found, on the one hand, so his daughter could speak to him someday, have a photograph, and know who he is. I wanted him to stay lost, on the other hand, because I didn't want him disrupting the placement. I vacillated between the two and dreaded the bad news that might come until our social worker called us at 5:30 PM.

And then the "Whew" feeling set in, because the lawyer had approved the diligence of the search, and our baby girl would be coming home with us the next morning. Everyone advised us to get "the last good night's sleep you'll get for a while" but we spent the sane hours of the evening mailing, phoning, texting, and Facebooking our news. No sleep was there to be found in our house that night. All the anxious days, the spasms over phones ringing and calls missed, the dead hours with no news were coming to an end, and motherhood was about to begin. That's where the "Alleluias" start.

Open Letter to the Lady who Accidentally Forwarded me a Petition today

(For context, it was a petition request from the oh-so-ironically-named Family Research Council asking me to protest the plans to allow homosexuals to serve in the military. Except that it's really a protest against the overturn of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, because CLEARLY there are already homosexuals in the armed forces, not even counting the one from The Village People.)

I suspect you were trying to send this to another Thalassa. But I'm going to take this little e-mail-mixup as an opportunity to remind you that homosexuals have been serving in the American military since we HAD a military, and in the British and French and Spanish militaries before the Revolution. And, stunningly, the thing still functions. Also, military forces in civilized countries around the world, like Israel and Britain, do not force their gay soldiers into a life built on lies. And, stunningly, they all still function, too. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, and that's one of the super-neat things about that military... Even while you're here trying to force 10% of them out of their livelihoods and their callings, they are out there defending your right to do so. Think on that for a bit, the next time you decide that your fellow Americans aren't just-like-you enough to protect you.

Sincerely,
Tha (the other one) lassa

alphabet soup

today a friend posted on his blog about the fact that the media-standard acronym LGBT (or GLBT, or GBLT - which can amusingly be pronounced giblet - and maybe isn't as standard as it seems after all) is morphing into the longer, more inclusive, but totally unpronounceable LGBTQQIA. and before you ask, because i know you're going to, it stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Ally community.

it prompted an unusually long and thoughtful response that has been percolating all day, so i'm elaborating here:

i thought there were two A's, one for asexual and one for ally. hrmmm... another friend has said he thinks the term asexual is wrong because it has a defined biological meaning, and that is not what you think it is. most people use asexual to describe humans who seem to be devoid of sexual impulse or sexual feelings, just not interested in sex at all and confused as to why the rest of us are so fascinated with it. however, in biological terms, it refers to critters that reproduce without the need of male and female partners, or without the need of partners at all. you know, critters that simply bud off or divide or something. i don't think that is going to stop the asexual community from using the term, though, so i guess they'll just have to brush up on their understandings of mitosis v. meiosis and keep on explaining that they're capable, but not interested, in the majority's favorite sport.

the guy who posted this was generally intimating that the longer acronym is silly when the shorter one is well-accepted and well-understood. personally, i disagree with him. i don't mind stringing bunches of letters together. it's no more awkward than the "colored people," "black people," "african american people" rigamarole that the media have marched through over the past 60-odd years. we've all survived, and we all knew who was being referenced by the terms, it just made the members of the community feel somewhat better to be referred to in respectful ways. the thing is, when the label on a racial community changes, there is no doubt that all the members of the race were and are still included. with the queer community, there have been a number of names and labels that were NOT so inclusive. every time we've changed the label, we've made the umbrella bigger, going from "gay community" to "gay and lesbian community" to "GLBT community" and now to "GLBTQQIA(A?)" i can't see that as a bad thing, but i figure that ultimately we'll be "the sexual and gender minority community" because that covers it all accurately and includes every imaginable group. further, i like "sexual and gender minority community" because it draws the very important distinction that not all the minorities under our umbrella feel themselves to be of a queer sexual orientation. for example, transgender and intersex individuals may not embrace the roles society expects them to play based on their biology, but it does not automatically follow that their sexual orientations are queer.

now this one i'm going to pose as a question, because i frankly don't know the answer. it seems to me that biracial folk are one of the few racial minorities that experience the queer labeling struggle in parallel. people are usually pretty clearly in or out of a racial or ethnic minority group, unless they are multiracial. sometimes they feel (and are treated) like outsiders in all the racial communities they try to straddle. sometimes their identity claims are rejected because they're not [insert identity] enough, as a half-[insert other identity here] person. i think any members of the GBLT community not covered by the acronym GBLT probably feel the same way. and that feeling has to suck. we read our children the story of the ugly duckling to remind them that even if they are rejected by one group, they will eventually find a place in life where they fit. how can we do that, and then turn around and tell people it's too much hassle to make room for them in our tent? a couple extra letters are that inconvenient? so hard to type? so much harder to say? stretch that canvas, i say. move those tent poles out a little further, and maybe the raindrops will bounce off a little better.

the irony of my favorite name for the community is that the term "sexual and gender minority community" really drives a spike in heart of the the "we're all normal, just like you" message, by emphasizing the minority aspect, the sexual aspect, and the gender-variant aspect of our big queer alphabet soup. and until there is some wider social acceptance of sexual and gender variance, the movable moderates need to keep being reminded that we're not a big scary "them" so much as we are an interesting and tangible "us". so alphabet soup it is.

The Infamous New Orleans Incident

I posted a meme a couple of days ago listing 25 random facts about me. Item 11 was a blithe statement, lightly made, about where I fall on The Kinsey Scale. Its breeziness belies the deep, awkward, messy journey that led to that clear pool of conclusion. But fear not, gentle readers, I'm not going to drag you down that winding, muddy, thorny path today. Instead, I'm going to tell you one of my favorite stories about that time; one that stands as a bright shaft of light on an otherwise dim path. This is a story of an event so fabulous, so infamous, it wound up on a t-shirt exemplifying "Drama Queen" behavior. This is the story of list item #18: I got an infamous haircut on the porch of an apartment over a fish market in New Orleans at Mardi Gras one year.

I was 24 years old, and had been pretty sure I was gay or bi for about 3 years. I had parlayed that faint thread of attraction I have for men into a string of monogamous, monotonous, and completely mediocre relationships since I was 14. Accordingly, for the first couple years after I acknowledged to myself that I was not straight I was in the middle of being in twoo wuv with a boy from my high school and we were SOOO SRSLY getting married. Right. So that fell apart and I got into what I expected would be a fling with a hot guy from the rugby team just for the sake of a rebound. Well, a year later, he and I were making plans to get married, because I'm kinda dense like that.

That's where I was personally. A few more details to finish the setting: I had this long curly hair that I'd been growing out ever since I got out of the Air Force Academy six years before. I was playing rugby, and there was an annual tournament in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was always a good party, and occasionally some good rugby, and definitely a learning experience. I got out of school late on a Friday, picked up my buddies, and we drove all night in my awesome little silver Saturn to get to New Orleans; we stayed with a friend who I think was named Nina. One of my rugby buddies was Betsy, this awesome pre-med dyke who had learned how to cut hair in the dorm at her all-girls college. She had the truest sense of herself of any person I've ever met... deep self-knowledge and confidence that really glowed right out her pores.

Well, Betsy and me and my Saturn-load of people ended up at Nina's apartment, which was on the second story over a small, independent fish market in a turn-of-the-century building with those cool, deep, sleeping porches all the way around. The fish market had a sign out front that consisted of a realistic, life sized marlin leaping out of the building like it was making a break for the freedom of the canal and then the open sea beyond. In other words, it was weird, slightly smelly, and thoroughly, typically New Orleanian.

We got there at 2 AM, I think, because of the late start. And just as we were settling in to our mattresses on the floor, some voices called from the street below... it was some of Nina's friends with beer in milk jugs that they'd brought from a keg party that got broken up by the cops. So they came up and we sat around sharing beer out of milk jugs and socializing. Around 4 they left and we fell into a dead sleep, but by 9 we were at the fields, a little weird, slightly smelly... you know how it goes. Even if you've never been there, and I commend you if you haven't, you've mocked somebody who was hurting on The Morning After.

We played 3 games of rugby that day, and I jumped in with another team for at least one more game, maybe 2. My hair was long, so I had to braid it to play, but it would get messed up during the game. And by "messed up" I mean so disheveled that I could pass for a transient and so full of grass and burrs and roots that if I had been my own horse, I'd have just cut the tangles out with a pocket knife. I had to re-braid it several times during the day to keep it out of my eyes and other people's fists. So we got back to Nina's that night and I was lying, totally exhausted, on a mattress on the floor waiting my turn in the shower. And I started thinking: I'm going to have to stand in the shower for 30 minutes with my arms over my head, picking burrs out of my hair, just so I can go to the bar tonight where it will absorb every whiff of cigarette smoke, so I can get up tomorrow and do this ALL. OVER. AGAIN. The thought just knocked me flat, and my arms would have screamed if they had mouths. That would be weirder than even New Orleans, so I'm glad they don't.

I looked at Betsy, lying exhausted on the couch near me and sporting a blissfully low-maintenance buzz cut, and asked, "Hey, Betsy, wanna cut my hair?"

She perked right up, said, "Hell, yeah! Short?!" I nodded, and she went scurrying for Nina's clippers and shears. We couldn't find them, but she found Nina's 5-year-old's safety scissors (with the rounded tips!) and went out on the porch and got started. The next time the bathroom was free, we found the clippers and hair-cutting shears, so she finished the job up properly. The other girls took my fluffy pile of hair, caught it up in a rubber band and tossed it out on top of the marlin's head. For one night, the fish market marlin had a Rastafarian-looking afro, while I had a more permanent installation of Lesbian Haircut #2.

We went to a bar in New Orleans called The Rubyfruit Jungle and I came home with short hair and Pride Beads. I suddenly understood why grownups were so down on kids making out, because when you're making out with the right people, it could totally turn into the sorts of things grownups don't want kids to do. The aftershocks of that weekend, those realizations, the books I looked to for answers, the people who helped me find them, they all agglomerate in a weird, slightly smelly, and thoroughly, typically New Orleanian gumbo that is my life. And it is thanks to all of them that I kept my balance, made it a few more steps up the path, and came to be able to blithely say "Oh, yeah. I'm a 4 on the Kinsey scale," like it's no big deal.

Relationship Recognition Action Feb 12, 2009

Dallas's National Freedom to Marry Day demonstration is set to take place on Thursday, February 12th beginning at 11:30 am. The event will start in the Historical Plaza, outside the Records Building at 509 Main St. in downtown Dallas. The aim of the event is to affirm the right of Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender (GLBT) people to marry the person of their choosing. Queer Liberaction (also here) and Join the Impact have organized Dallas's demonstration for National Freedom to Marry Day.

Rose and I are going to take part in this demonstration. Do you know someone who cares about relationship recognition? Do you want to see what it's all about? Come on down to the Records Building on Feb. 12 and have a look.

We care because when we travel into Canada, we can fill out one customs form and cross the border as a family, but coming home we have to fill out two cards and pretend we're strangers. And that's just stupid. We care because we had to hire a lawyer to make it so that we're "next of kin" when it comes to medical decisions, insurance matters, and property division. We're not allowed to file joint taxes. When we have kids, we'll have to navigate an uncertain and nerve-wracking legal process to try to get both of us listed as their parents. Only one of us will get to claim our kids as dependents.

We care because, although Texas has a law and a state constitutional amendment stating that there is no form of same-sex relationship contract that the state will honor, let alone create, we're here. We live here because our parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins live here. We live here because we were born and raised in Texas and we love it. But our family is in a legal state of limbo, because some people think that we, their neighbors, (who are already here and already have families, thank you very much!) are a threat of some kind. A threat to the "sanctity" of a contract drawn up at the JP's office?

We're not going to petition churches to change their religious beliefs, we're going to ask the County of Dallas to extend the same rights and obligations to us that they would extend to any other citizen. You know, the way it works in countries that are NOT theocracies...

frustrated at the airport

chicago airport nominally has wi-fi. but it's run by boingo, and so far i have been completely underwhelmed by their service. i beat my head against the wi-fi signal for about half an hour trying to get my dadgum e-mail and as a result, i'm probably not going to get this posted until i get home. unlike the usual head-beating routine, this actually had a positive effect: i managed to read all my e-mail. i didn't get to send many replies and i certainly didn't hazard sending attachments, just quick notes telling people i'd send attachments later.

tomorrow, i have an appointment with my lawyer. nothing to worry about, unless you're my banker. that's because i'm giving my lawyer several thousand dollars to draw up a series of legal papers and contracts that ensure that, as nearly as possible, the state of texas and the institutions within or without will be forced to recognize rose as my partner and my next of kin and my power of attorney (aka: my wife). so, those of you that have the option of domestic partnership or marriage where you live: treasure that and defend it at the polls. texas has not one but TWO state "Defense of Marriage Acts" averring that it will never recognize marriage or any other institution conferring the benefits of marriage on any sort of homosexual partnership. of course, eventually the federal bench will catch on to the fact that preventing legal recognition of gay relationships doesn't prevent people from ENTERING gay relationships. and because the partnerships are formed, they eventually end for whatever reason. if family and probate courts are able to rely on case law and treat those endings exactly like they do the endings of marriages, it'll make everyone's lives a lot easier. and that's the thing that irritates me about opposition to gay marriage: it doesn't hurt anyone for me to be able to go the JP and get married. straight people in their religious or non-religious marriages will still be just as married, just as committed, just as faithful after a gay couple marries as they were (or weren't) before. it doesn't help straight people at all, but it hurts me and it hurts my friends.

my plane is about to board. i'm home sweet home for four days, and then i'm on the road again. i'll probably spend 90% of that time sleeping and trying to desiccate the giant snot-factory that's set up operations in my sinuses. if you have any anti-viral prayers, meditations, or vibes, i could really use them. that, or a year's supply of kleenex with lotion built right in. i'll need that if the vibes don't work out.

far be it from me to mock someone for large hair, because i am an offender whenever the humidity gets high, but wow... there is some Lubbock-style big hair on the lady cleaning up gate B14 at O'Hare Terminal 1. she looks like she probably has a lifetime of interesting stories to tell, but she quite clearly stopped updating her 'do in about 1965. yikes.

some thoughts...

This is a little post that came up in response to an Open Forum question over at Queers United about whether "any press is good press." I think that (brace yourselves) it depends. Yeah, it's that balance thing again. In some times, and for some groups, negative press is better than none. For most of the various groups under the big queer umbrella these days, I don't think that's necessarily true.

We don't need truly bad publicity in the sense of news stories covering queer people misbehaving. We had that all along, really, and it never worked to desensitize people. In fact, for many years the only time the word homosexual appeared in the press was if it came up in the course of a criminal investigation. That's what the coming out movement was meant to address. We created the first positive media images for ourselves by acting like our normal selves and making it public that we happened to be gay.

I think that the big queer umbrella gets as much negative publicity from the radical acts at Pride as the Christians get from real nutcases like Fred Phelps & Family. Most people are going to laugh that off as the work of a few extremists, and maybe take steps to distance or protect themselves from the crazy venom. People who are extremists themselves are going to use it against us as evidence that we're all flagrantly immoral. Just like the extremists among queers use Phelps as evidence that all Christians are ignorant bigots.

I don't think we can expect the news media to do their job as documentarians while simultaneously expecting them to be our PR spinmeisters. It's a conflict of interest. Let the media do its job of showing what's out there. They will always seize upon the extreme because people find the extremes interesting, and thus, pay money to consume media about them. If we want our press to be mostly good, then we have to make sure that we take it upon ourselves to do good things and make sure there's a local reporter covering it when we do.

Then there are the gray areas... publicity in the sense of mass entertainment media. Do we have to demand only "good" representations in fictional media, or should we allow "bad" ones on the grounds that any publicity is good? I think 10 or 20 years ago, that might've been valid. It was so rare to see gay characters on TV or in movies that I was grateful for any depiction, be it the most caricatured negative stereotype possible. These days, with Logo TV and "The L Word" and "Queer As Folk" and many other media outlets showing gay people in realistic settings, I think the standards need to go up.

quickie

I have about five minutes to write this while some stuff i'm doing for work makes a long, tortuous slog from Texas to Quebec and back, by way of Pennsylvania. It's going on the intarweb, so it ought to be reasonably fast, but i imagine all the firewalls, VPNs, routers, and Snuffleupaguses between here and there are going to slow it enough for me to peck out a few words today.

I'm getting married Saturday (in Canada). Officially, technically, it doesn't "mean anything" since Texas doesn't recognize gay marriage in any way, and the US in general doesn't, either. Even if they did, my understanding is that two American citizens living in the US cannot go abroad to marry and transfer that home. However, the closer I get to the date, the more it settles in my heart exactly how much this really does "mean". I started down this path because I thought it was important for my family to see me get married. I know exactly what my relationship to Rose is, what it means, how serious and good and committed it is. But until I marry her, my family doesn't know that. I don't talk about my feelings very much at all, and unless someone asks a direct question, I don't volunteer. Even if I could single out every person in my family and friend network and tell them exactly what Rose means to me -- and I didn't die of an emotional hemorrhage from talking about my feelings that much -- even then I'm quite sure it would not have the same impact that simply getting married has. Culturally, the act of getting married says something to people that I doubt I could put into words.

Does it matter what other people think? On one level, of course it does not. I know in my heart, mind and soul exactly how I feel, think, and relate. None of those things changes because I've promised out loud in front of witnesses to continue to do so. But on another level, it does. My life is not lived in a vacuum, it's carried on in the mesh of my entire community of family and friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and strangers. Saying "I'm married" makes it immediately obvious to people how they should relate to me, where my significant other fits into my life, and how they should relate to her if and when they meet. It's cultural shorthand, and I like shorthand, especially when it comes to discussing my emotions. That's it! I'm getting married so I won't have to talk about my feelings so much! heh. Okay, maybe not...

In the sense that I'll be able to utilize that cultural shorthand in explaining that piece of my life, going through with this ritual does indeed mean something. In the sense that it will make it easier for my extended family to take in and deal with the immediate family I'm starting, it also "means something". That's probably not sufficient reason to do all the things involved in getting married. Heck, it's probably not even a sufficient reason to stuff myself into a strapless dress. For someone with my dating record and my legendary fear of commitment, proving that I'm willing to marry may be more important than actually doing it.

I also can't deny that the political act of marrying, knowing that it won't be recognized at home, and marrying anyway, will make a difference in the legal recognition of gay marriage in the US. I hope that as more gay couples make these public commitments to each other, more people will understand that this is no threat to their lives. I'm not getting married so I can swing a bayonet at anyone's marriage or family. I'm not going to force anyone else to get married. Conversely, I'm darn sure not going to go away or quit being gay because I'm denied civil equality. I'm just trying to give my life a little balance in my little corner of the world.

Strict Scrutiny...

Recently, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case of a Maj. Witt of the US Air Force (USAF). She was a combat nurse, highly decorated, 18 years into her service. She had literally been an Air Force poster child, her image used in recruiting materials over the years. Until, in 2004, someone snitched on her and informed one of her superiors that she had 'the gay' - it's a disease, you see, something like 'the plague' or 'the I'm about to be expensive.' She was investigated and ultimately given an honorable discharge, all just one year before her eligibility for a lifetime pension.

Because I'm a nerd, I read up the review of the case at Law.com and found out some really interesting things which I'm about to share with those of you who are lazy, link-averse readers. For instance, a lot of folks I've heard criticizing those discharged under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy dismiss the issue with an argument along these lines: "She knew the rules, she broke 'em, she got discharged, and now she's whining about it? Shut up, already."

The thing is, Maj. Witt DID NOT break the rules. She did have a civilian partner, but she didn't talk about it, didn't write about it, didn't protest about it. In fact, her partner lived 250 miles from base, so she didn't flaunt the fact at the occasional grocery-store run-in with fellow servicemembers. She was abiding solidly by the rules laid out in the policy.

Now, what's nerdy and interesting about this decision of the 9th Circuit, and the reason that it made the news at all, is that in light of the decision handed down by the Supreme Court in Lawrence & Garner v. Texas in 2003 the appeals court has required a higher standard of proof from the military that the discharge was justified. That is, there has long been what the legal profession calls the "rational basis" test to determine whether laws like this are reasonable. Basically, the court asks the government why it must discriminate against some of its citizens. The government then says that it had a rational basis for enacting the law or policy in question, and from there the court has simply ruled on whether it was implemented fairly.

Since Lawrence, however, the court is looking more closely at the rational basis itself, not just the application of it. (In Lawrence, the Supreme Court said that the state of Texas had no rational basis for regulating private sexual behavior between consenting adults, even if they have the gay.) The Lawrence decision gets into a legal doctrine called "strict scrutiny" which the 9th Circuit declined to require of the military in this case. Instead, they've required some middle ground between rational basis and strict scrutiny, probably because applying strict scrutiny would effectively destroy DADT outright. The Supreme Court would be very likely to overturn a ruling like that, so the circuit court walked a line here between making an eloquent point and howling at the moon.

So, the rational basis for DADT has always been that keeping servicemembers closeted was necessary to promote unit cohesion, individual morale, good order and discipline, and readiness among the troops. All laudable goals, assuredly, but quite vague. HOW EXACTLY, the 9th Circuit has asked, did Maj. Witt (remember all those medals and commendations?) threaten good order and discipline? If the protests of her co-workers, superiors, subordinates, and patients are any indication, the only thing about her that damaged morale was her ouster. The only possible way she could have been perceived as a threat to readiness is if someone thought they could use her pension dollars for something else and had to get her out of the way to do it.

This will be VERY interesting to watch. Kinda like watching someone work their jaw in futility when you ask them how, exactly, my impending gay wedding threatens or damages their straight marriage in any way.

Carlsbad, NM - redux

Rose and I just got back from Carlsbad, NM. We went there last year on our road trip, but on that visit it was merely a waypoint. This time, we met up with friends from the Dykes on Bikes e-mail list and the whole point was to visit the caverns and the surrounding countryside, like Roswell. Here we are, a small group of Dykes on Bikes, ready to go into the caverns. Your friendly, neighborhood giant amazon is easy to spot. In fact, this theme was so pronounced that our friend Chelli took a picture of a cavern formation to exemplify it. Here: See? That's me on the right. Now, ordinarily, I'd do a whole cool ride report on how fabby the roads were and all the great places that we ate and all the sorts of things I get excited about. In the case of this trip, however, we were in the unenviable position of having to ride from the edge of the Texas Black Prairie across the Western Plains to the edge of the Guadalupe Mountains. The operative words there are Prairie and Plains. The chief difference between them is their aridness, and they're not much to look at beyond that. They do make for some outstanding sunsets and sunrises with the wide open spaces in front of you. Unfortunately, that only occupies about 2 hours of your day, and then you still have the other 22 in which to contend with the pancake-ocity of it all. So: flat, pancake-ocity, and the tumblin' tumbleweeds. What makes the tumbleweeds tumble, you may wonder? Well, I'll tell you - it ain't the sheer joy of skipping over the thrilling landscape. It's the plain desire to look at something OTHER than the plains. That, or the blistering wind. :)

Our chief form of entertainment on this ride, after we'd seen the caverns, was to ride across the prairie/plains taking pictures of each other.





We had ourselves some fun up in Roswell. The Harley dealership out there has a couple of big bikes on display with an alien and an MP, respectively, riding them. We took some silly photos of ourselves hugging the aliens and whatnot before settling in to a nice light lunch of BBQ ribs, sausage, and all the trimmings.




Oh, Cavern highlights, lest I forget: we walked through it with a Ranger who just happened to be starting his route about the same time as us. He showed us all sorts of neat things about the cave that you'd never find without a guide and a flashlight. There are places right along the path where you can see bat bones being fossilized right into the drip-formed stalagmites, and rock formations that glow if you give them a good dose of light. They even have a cave ghost that you can see in photographs... He's a natural rock formation that doesn't look like anything special until you use the flash on your camera. Then those eyes pop out of the darkness at you! The low wall that keeps tourists on the trail and off the stalagmites is full of fascinating little 'easter eggs' if you know what to look for. Our ranger guide showed us a rubber high bounce ball, a glow-in-the-dark gecko, a keepsake penny, a Pennsylvania quarter, an American flag, and a few other neat little peeks and pokes that probably go unnoticed by 99.9% of the cavern visitors. Finally, a fossil that was dug up from the cave and put out on display to illustrate why it's occasionally good for things in the cavern to break:
So, that was Carlsbad. Well, there was the bit about the largest North American Colony of Mexican Freetail Bats flying out of the cave and right over our heads at sunset and then the thrilling ride back down the mountain in the cool night air with the full moon rising. But honestly, you had to be there for that... so I hope to see you out on the road next time.

Fraaaaank says, "I plaaan zis parfet wadding vur yew!"

My dear friend, Brad, has decided to help Rose and I out a little by advising us on our "something old/something new/something borrowed/something blue" wedding traditions. He's a doll, and a good sport when I do something dykey and don't quite reach the FABulous mark. Rose is always thoroughly fabulous, but she has an alter-ego to help her with that. I have to muddle through with neither a gay man's sensibility for fabulousness nor a straight woman's aplomb for aesthetics. So, basically, I'm a dude.

Anyway, in his spirit of helpfulness, Brad photochopped us all into a scene from Father of the Bride to help us all get into character. Anyone remember that movie? I'm afraid it may have set unreasonably high expectations in my parents' minds for what their daughters' weddings would be like. One out of three ain't bad? (My apologies to Mr. Meatloaf...)

P.S.: Mom & Dad, if you read this, I'm kidding about the movie.

CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME!!!

... okay, maybe i'm not going to california. but i really like that song lyric and i bellow it at the top of my lungs whenever i can. making it a nice big, bold post topic counts as bellowing. you can blame my mother, who taught me that if i couldn't sing it well or remember all the words, i should make up for it by singing the parts i knew VERY LOUDLY.

so, california legalized gay marriage today! great news. when you get the press release from Equality Texas (which is where the above clicky takes you) you also get the following interesting factoids...

According to a January, 2008 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, approximately 50,000 same-sex couples were living in Texas in 2005. About 20% of these couples are raising an estimated 17,444 children. They deserve the same opportunity to legally protect their family relationships as all California couples now have.



Equality Texas will continue its ongoing efforts to help build strong Texas families, including those with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender family members.

I had no idea there were so many. Some days, it feels like Rose and I are the only ones. Of course, percentagewise, that's only about 0.5% of the state population, but it doesn't take into account the unattached ones. To look at it another way, it's half the population of the city of Plano - which is 9th in the state, for those of you not familiar with the outliers of the DFW metroplex. That's quite a lot of people.

*crosses fingers* someday, right?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor

THIS is the reason for Coming Out. When gay people have the courage to explain their orientation to those near and dear to them, the dear ones see the human face of gay people. We are not monsters. We are not depraved beasts intent on destroying the moral fabric of or the family unit in America. My gay agenda mostly consists of getting paid for doing my job, spending my free time with family and friends, and remembering to pour out the milk when it goes sour, y'know?

The quick summary for the link averse: Jerry Sanders, the mayor of San Diego has tearfully confirmed that he will support gay marriage, as opposed to civil union, in San Diego. Part of his decision was based on his recognition that he couldn't sanction unequal treatment for his gay daughter.

Dallas Pride Parade 2007

Dallas has their gay pride celebration in September. Most cities have theirs in June, to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of 1969. But in Dallas, nominally to honor the first reversal of the Texas sodomy statutes by Judge Barefoot Sanders (I am not making this up! That's his name!) and realistically in deference to the blistering heat of June weather in Texas, we hold our parade in September. Even then, it's pretty doggone hot. The good thing about this is that I was able to attend San Francisco Pride this year in cool, comfortable temperatures in June, and then Dallas Pride in relatively comfortable (relative to June in Dallas) temperatures in September. Double my fun!

Hot or not, we were out with our Big Girl Britches on, braving the crowds and the drama and the deadly strings of flying Mardi Gras beads, and having fun. Here are some pictures! The black bike in the foreground is the next evolution of design for my bike. It's called a Valkyrie Rune. It's not my idea of a replacement for the fantastic tourer I ride, primarily because it doesn't have a stock passenger seat or saddlebags. Mine is the red one behind, with the Texas flag hanging from it. Rose's is just behind mine with the US flag on hers. We mount flagpoles on our luggage racks for this parade and it looks pretty sharp, if I do say so. You can see for yourself... It's not that I'm a queer aesthetic snob or anything, but I really like the appurtenances to my bike to look nice and DUCT TAPING a 1x2 to my passenger seat doesn't fit my snobby queer aesthetic standards. :) That said, the overall effect was very nice from a distance, as you can see. A long line of open-minded motorcyclists stretching off to the horizon! Muahahahaha! My gay agenda plan for world domination is nearly complete!



The girl on the back of my bike is Rose's ex. The girl on the back of Rose's bike is said ex's current girlfriend. They found us along the parade route and hopped on board. In accordance with the age-old adage that 'nobody rides for free', they bought us a beer after the ride was over. It was great fun! I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little weird, but either they're as drama free as we are, or they were on their best behavior. Either way, it was All Good and we had fun hanging out. Here's another photo of me with my passenger. It has been suggested that Rose has a "thing" for tall brunettes, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Once the parade was over, we pulled in near the park and sat in the shade to hear the fabulous Anton Shaw sing us some tunes. Pretty soon, I couldn't sit still any more, and I got up to play catch with the Diablos who were out tossing the rugby ball around. No, they're not actual demons. Just a bunch of guys who are mostly gay and play rugby. Thanks for letting me play, boys! And let me close by saying that there is absolutely nothing in my long years playing women's rugby that prepared me for seeing a drag queen in silver lamé miniskirt, bolero jacket and knee-high boots running down the field to receive a pass. Just nothing. I don't even know if a picture could adequately express how weird that was.

And that's the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade 2007. Weird, but good. But for all the sights of the parade, nothing was as weird as seeing myself from behind, playing rugby in jeans.

San Francisco Pride

I rode my motorcycle to San Francisco and all I got was this T-shirt.

which, actually, i love. the shirt is the negative of that jpg image, which is fine in a place like san francisco where the summer temperatures are around 75 F. in dallas, we make white t-shirts for pride because (even though we have pride in the early fall) it's still blazing freaking hot and nobody wants to wear a black t-shirt when it's 100 out. seriously, rain is an improvement on the weather at dallas pride, because it keeps the temperatures tolerably low.

After tooling around Napa Valley all day Saturday, attending the Dykes on Bikes Pride Party, and eating lovely seafood at Fisherman's Pier on Saturday evening, we queued up for the parade bright and squirrelly Sunday morning. The DoB (aka: San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent) were very excited because they finally were near the end of their struggle with the US Trademark office to protect the name of the organization and make their unofficial name into the official name. The parade draws 400 or so bikes every year, and about a million spectators, and that requires a pretty high level of organization. We had to stage up between 7 and 8 to start the parade at 10. I am NOT, repeat NOT a "morning person". My day usually only has one 5 in it. Verily, it has also only one 6 in it. On this day, I was ON. MY. BIKE. at 6 AM. And in case you'd forgotten, San Francisco is COLD in the summer. It's especially cold in the dawn's early light.



But I lined up, I got my coffee, and then I lay down for a nap. And, no, I didn't spill any of that coffee. Apparently, the nap created something of a stir. I, naturally, was dead asleep and didn't know that I'd created a stir until the sun started peeking over the tall buildings of Market St. and woke me up. But my girlfriend and her friends thought it was so funny that people kept stopping to take my picture that they took pictures of the people taking pictures. I picked up a passenger for the parade, and we had a great time riding down the route and waving at all the people. One of my favorite features of the parade is that the Dykes on Bikes go first. If you've ever driven a stick-shift in gridlocked traffic, you know how not-fun it is to do stop-and-go in first gear. it's really awful on a bike because your clutch is operated by your left hand, and you eventually get a cramp in it, no matter how many times you've squeezed those grip exercisers that were ubiquitous in the 80's. where did they go? anyway, with the bikes at the front, they get to set the pace and they don't have to stop every time a marching band out front decides to hold up the parade so they can grandstand for the ... um ... grandstand.

After the parade, we went to the Pride festival. It wasn't drastically different from any other Pride festival i've ever attended except that it was very big and I'd heard of the bands that were playing. Oh, and it was cool out. People were in the most AMAZING costumes, elaborate things made of feathers and glitter and paint that would've totally melted in the Texas heat but which were made possible by all the cold water out in San Francisco bay. And city hall was flying a pride flag out front. That was pretty damn amazing. Not only was I proud, but the whole city was proud with me. I'm not sure I can explain how that feels, but it's kinda like how it felt when I was in survival school in the Air Force and at the very end of the week we spent as POW's in an "internment" camp, our formation was ordered to about-face. we expected to see the People's Republic of Berzerkistan (thanks to Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury for that very awesome fictional country name) flag that had been flying overhead all week and which we'd been forced to salute and pledge allegiance to. But the US flag was flying there instead. We all cried a little. It's like coming home, but it's more... it's a like a homecoming you desperately need don't dare hope for because you knew it can't happen... and then it does.

back from connecticut

well, i'm back home safe and sound from connecticut. the road signage continued to be woefully inadequate at almost all times. the interstate freeways themselves, because they are under federal guidelines, were adequately marked. however, getting onto them from the state and local roads was occasionally a very dicey game.

yesterday was the gay pride parade in dallas and i rode my motorcycle. i'd affixed a texas flag and a us/pride flag to the back. my girlfriend had attached a us flag and a banner for her motorcycle club, so we got to lead the group out with our flag display. i picked up a passenger. she was some cute kid who had turned 19 just the day before and had ALWAYS wanted to ride on a motorcycle, etc. her girlfriend rode along as a passenger with my girlfriend, so that was some nice symmetry. it was slick and rainy and there was junk all over the street that various floats ahead of us had tried to toss at the crowd and then missed. how you could throw and miss a wall of people 4 feet from you, i don't know. but i assure you, there was plenty of flotsam atop the oil slick atop the water-slick streets. it made some of those parade maneuvers a bit scary. it was my first time carrying a passenger, and i was terrified that i might drop the bike in a turn or hit a string of beads just as i was braking down a hill and slide right into the antique car in front of me. anyway, i survived. and photos seem to indicate i was smiling:

that's me out front looking at the camera. in the vee between my flagpoles you can see my girlfriend laughing out loud at something. now, back to the trash on the street question - how can you throw something at a crowd like that and MISS?!?!
here's another picture. it's a little blurry, but it's got a much better angle:
it rained on us all day long, which was a mixed blessing. the temperature was cooler than our daytime average, but then... we were all wearing wet underwear and socks. really, nothing dampens my mood quite like wet socks and underwear. hunger and cold can make me really cranky, but for general mood funk - wet socks and underwear are the ultimate trigger.

the photographer noted that she'd never seen my hair braided up like that before. it's really just gotten long enough for that quite recently, since i'm growing it out again after having donated it to Locks Of Love. i think i've only worn it braided 4 times this year. braiding my own hair is one of those phenomenally useful skills i picked up along the way rather by accident and didn't appreciate the value of until well after the fact. the other two skills i count in that way are typing and the "roll step".

i rebelled against taking typing when my mom "suggested" it my freshman year of high school. "but moooooom! i'm not going to be a secretary, i don't need typing!" you almost have to be a freshman in high school with no understanding of how an office works to comprehend how much scorn i heaped on the words 'secretary' and 'typing'. needless to say, i've used my typing skills nearly every day since then and couldn't be more grateful to my mother for insisting that i learn.

the "roll step" is something you learn in the marching band. it's a way of placing your heel and of rolling your weight along the outside of your foot as you walk so you don't jounce along and break your teeth off with the mouthpiece of your musical instrument. if you like coffee, and have ever tried to walk back to your desk with a hot mugful, you realize the application immediately. until i made the ridiculous mistake of trying to wear women's dress shoes that matched my business attire better than they matched my lifestyle, i never spilled hot coffee on my fingers as i passed through the office. the "roll step" requires a reasonably flexibly-soled shoe with a relatively low heel on it. a glorious open-toed black franco santo with a 2" heel on it does NOT work with the roll step.

the hair braiding thing i owe to the air force academy. my hair is a giant mop which is not, under even the best of conditions, militarily uniform. nobody has the time or inclination to braid their roommate's hair every day, so my roommate showed me basically how she did her own and left me to adapt the technique for myself. i practiced a lot while reading history texts and eventually my hair got long enough and i got good enough. again, it's something i've used so often since then that i can't begin to imagine getting through my rugby career, my surveying jobs, or my professional career as an alarm-over-sleeper without it.

a little more info...

okay, here's a little followup on the "sensitive subject" post. This article from a gay-targetted publication in the UK points out the following facts regarding the Arabic linguist recently dismissed under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".

In August 2005, an anonymous individual emailed Copas’s unit, alleging there was an online profile of a unit member identifying them as gay.

Despite clear instructions that investigations into sexual orientation are only to be commenced when a service member’s command has “credible evidence” indicating the service member is gay, Copas’s command nonetheless asked him about his sexual orientation and went on to launch a full investigation into allegations about him.

The command-appointed investigating officer interviewing Copas asked such questions as, “Do you work off duty with the local community theatre?” and “Do you know or are you aware of anyone who believes you are a homosexual?”

He also recommended conducting “an inquiry…into the possibility of further homosexual conduct by member(s) of the (unit).”

Despite never learning who made the original allegations against him, Sergeant Copas was dismissed from the Army in January.

So, it's nothing really new, just a little more information on the rules regarding investigation of allegedly gay service members. I didn't know from CNN that the original accusation was merely that one of the members of the unit might have a profile up online that showed he was gay. I know that according to DADT they're not allowed to be "out" but unless the profile said something like "Hi, my name's Sargeant Joe and I'm a member of the 82nd Airborne, and I'm gay," the guy hasn't really outed himself. After all, in order to know that the guy had a gay profile, you had to be looking for gay profiles. That said, if he really outed himself under his full name and photo on the internet, I have little sympathy for him regarding his dismissal. Small as the odds are that he'd be caught by his command chain, he's not supposed to out himself at all, anywhere. Here's the thought from this article that really pegged me:

The SLDN* labelled the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell as (sic) “ineffective and convenient, weapon of vengeance in our armed forces.”

Sharra Greer, director for law and policy said: “Anyone with an axe to grind, a former partner or roommate, or an angry relative, for example, can end an otherwise promising career simply by employing rumour and hearsay. "

*SLDN - Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

And what Ms. Greer has said is what really bothers me most about the policy, on a personal level. As an American, desirous of safety, and protective of my civil liberties, I am bothered by the fact that an Arabic linguist with a clean record of service to the military was dismissed while we're supposedly fighting a "War On Terror". The fact that he was dismissed as the result of an anonymous tip by someone with an axe to grind only makes it worse. The liberal in me is incensed that 200-odd years after psychologists developed the terminology to discuss homosexuality, an orientation that insofar as we know dates back as far as heterosexuality, our society is still so freaked out by what we don't understand that we can't tolerate its presence in our midst.

Thoughts on a sensitive subject...

So, another case of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has made it into the mainstream news. This time, the valuable point was raised by the media that this particular soldier had some very valuable skills and we really can't afford to be kicking guys like this out of the force right now. See the full article here. The short of it is that an Arabic linguist was reported anonymously to his superiors, who investigated him under the pressure of threats from the accuser. At some point in the process, he was offered an honorable discharge, which he accepted much as one would accept a plea bargain in a criminal case. Trying to find work with a dishonorable discharge is a lot like trying to find work with a felony conviction on your record. Employers are loathe to hire someone who has a "dirty past". As I understand the policies, if the accused follows the investigation to a finding of guilt, s/he is given a dishonorable discharge. The soldier has since admitted that he is gay, and knew going into the military that he would have to live a closeted life. He knew it would be difficult, but was willing to accept the terms of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in order to fulfill the duty he felt. Unfortunately, someone else decided to end his career for him.

Now, as a former student at the US Air Force Academy who took the oath and wore the uniform, I have some thoughts on this subject. Furthermore, as a gay person, I have some other thoughts on it. Finally, as a citizen who is protected by the men and women in the military today, I've got some thoughts. So, I'll share them. Yea, blogs! I don't have to wait for you to ask...

So, here's the part that might surprise some of you: I understand the reluctance to admit "out" homosexuals to the forces. Some of it probably is rooted in homophobia and discrimination and our association of "gay" with "sissie" and "effeminate" and all that the stereotypical gung-ho military persona is opposed to. But some of it comes from a reasonable place. This is the same reasonable place that at least part of the objection to women in front-line combat forces comes from. In tense, deployed situations where service members are isolated from their real lives, intense emotions are the norm. People who think they're about to die together and literally could at any minute form relationships that are forged out of the extremity of their conditions. If you add to those already-abnormally-intense bonds the element of romantic love, either straight or gay, you create a potentially very dangerous situation.

How many of you who've ever been intensely involved with someone would deny that you felt that person and/or your relationship was more important than anything else in the world? That person became more important than supposedly critical and permanent things like your family ties, your job, paying your bills, keeping up with your friends and your activities. Usually, you get over that infatuated phase, and get back to your integrated life with all its facets, but you go through it so you can understand this exercise: Imagine that you're out there, fighting the bad guys every day. You hear the mortars crashing around your camp all night, every night. And then you're out on patrol one day, and a bomb goes off, and you look over and realize your buddy is missing half his parts. You scream for help, and you start doing the stuff you've trained to do in this situation. You make it as secure as possible for your team, get medical en route, and do first aid. What if, instead of your buddy, that was your girlfriend? What if it was your boyfriend? What if it was your husband, or wife, or lover? What if it was the person you thought you couldn't live without? Would you be able to shut off your grief, do your job, and hold it together in a combat zone while you watched the heart of your heart bleed out on the floor of a humvee? I'm not willing to bet on it, and neither are most of the folks in the command structure. That is why defenders of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and the "No women in combat roles" policies say that it's contrary to good discipline to reverse the policies.

Now, I'm not saying the scenario above is the only reason those policies are in place, but it's one of them. And it's a good one. American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines train very hard to be very good at what they do and to do it under extreme duress. They learn to get the job done even when they're tired, or hot, or cold, or wet, or hungry or any of the other things civilians can and do give as an excuse when we don't perform at our best. Even so, they are human and subject to human foibles. People do EXCEEDINGLY STUPID THINGS and foul up the job at hand over love. I don't want those EXCEEDINGLY STUPID THINGS to take place when the job at hand involves the national defense.

Now, that said, I don't think gays or women should be excluded from the military. If they want to serve, they should be able to. I, unfortunately, don't have a solution to offer as to how to avoid the pitfalls I've mentioned. Maybe we should ask the Israeli army? Men and women are drafted for compulsory service there, so they've obviously got something worked out. I know that a chief reason for which women have clamored after combat roles here is that they are de facto essentials in the promotion game. Without combat experience, the career ceiling is much lower. Women who want the same opportunities as their male colleagues need combat postings. The only way to foster promotion equality without putting women in combat is to create a separate set of promotion criteria for them, and I think that idea sucks. Setting different standards for men and women creates resentment and makes for a pervasive hostile environment that is bad for morale all over. So the apparent route to promotion equality then is women in combat. With that, the issue of handling sexual interactions in combat zones resurfaces, and if you're doing that for the heterosexual set, you might as well apply the same treatment to the homosexual set. I don't know how to do it, although I have a few ideas. None of that is well enough formed for me to be willing to post it out there on the internet yet, so you'll just have to hold your breath.

That's my general commentary on the policies as they relate to exclusion, equality, morale, and discipline. Specifically, I'd like to comment on the fact that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a terrible weapon in the hands of a spurned romantic interest. Think back to how many of your relationships have ended awkwardly if not outright BADLY. Now, imagine that the psycho ex who called you at work and played love songs into your voice mail and turned up at your house at all hours of the night could, with a single anonymous e-mail, end your entire career. They'd have done it, wouldn't they? Gays in the military face that threat. I think that some fences need to be put around the "Don't Tell" portion of the policy. I'm neither a lawyer nor a policy writer, so I don't have specifics or wording for this, but something that protects men and women who are abiding by the "Don't Tell" portion of the policy from being ratted out by a bitter ex-lover would be ideal.

Go ahead and sound off, readers. Let me know what you think.

Crossdressing lawyer in the news

This article turned up in the "Weird news" feed from Reuters. Here's the text in case that link dies...
Cross-dressing lawyer skirts dress code
Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:52am ET166

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A male lawyer who appeared in a New Zealand court dressed in an ankle-length skirt, lace stockings and a diamond brooch said Tuesday he was protesting against a male bias in the country's justice system.

Rob Moodie, a former New Zealand Police union secretary, stunned the courtroom Monday when he appeared in women's clothing at a hearing related to a long-running case involving the death of a man in a bridge collapse on a North Island farm.

Moodie said he wore the two-piece women's suit because of what he described as a boys' network in the court room.

"I'm objecting to the male ethos that is dominating this case and from now on I'm going to be dressing as a girl in my daily life," Moodie told Reuters.

"It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't seen the gung-ho attitude in this case. The more this goes on and the deeper the cover-up gets, the frocks will get prettier," he said.

Moodie, who said he was wearing a skirt while talking to Reuters by telephone, is married with three children but said he had a strong female gender bias.

"The sexes are not opposite, they're complementary," he said, drawing comparisons with New Zealand's hugely popular All Blacks rugby side.

"The front row of the All Blacks is a very important part of maleness and is not to be disparaged at all, but neither should the guy who wants to do ballet," Moodie said.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

The thing is, I'm not sure from the article if the guy just wants to crossdress, or if he's really doing it as a protest. If the latter, it's unclear whether he's protesting the case specifically, or the justice system generally. Maybe the protest serves two purposes? Maybe he needed the excuse of protest to be able to crossdress, since that's what he wanted to do anyway. I'm not sure and the article doesn't answer that for me. Either way, I'd love to see a day when this makes the regular news wire, and not the "weird news" wire, y'know?

just a quick note...

i'm alive, but i'm tired. i'm going to bed!

i have new fish, i still need to put up a picture or a video of them... i'll try to do that. i took some video of them, but it's not very exciting, frankly. i have a very small, very primitive webcam with a very narrow focus band, so basically i just point it at the fishtank and hope that the little goobers swim into focus. :)

i nearly got sent to victoria this week to do some research, but that was delayed at the last minute. just as well, neither of my parents were home, so i'd have been hanging out in their back yard waiting for the cleaning lady to come over with her key and let me in! wow, that would suck. so, hopefully i'll get to go next week.

if you haven't seen it yet, Willie Nelson did a gay cowboy song and video. the video was shot partly at the gay country bar here in dallas, the roundup. so go here to see it!

is it friday yet? well, it will be in fifteen minutes, so now i REALLY need to get off to bed.