I was telling the story yesterday of Greysen getting a cold this past week while we were traveling for my Gramma's funeral. And I said to a co-worker, "I can't get him to stop kissing people on the mouth, so, of course, he got sick. And then he probably infected everyone he kissed as well."
The co-worker responded, with a chuckle, "Wouldn't it be funny if Greysen turned out to be flaming Gay?"
I didn't know how to respond. How does one respond to this question? It raised so many questions and so many responses, that I was stunned into a non-response. That just isn't like me.
Relatedly, yesterday was the official end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the military in the U.S. Witness history and be proud that the U.S. can look beyond this irrelavant personal detail. The question was, for this situation and for the instance of my co-worker making that comment, "What does it matter?"
Part of the problem with Don't Ask, Don't Tell is that it tried to say that sexual orientation doesn't matter so don't ask about it, don't talk about it. That meant that anyone who did talk about being gay or even worse, acted on being gay, was discharged. Sexually DOES matter to people's lives. It's not an irrelevant personal detail in my life. Ask about it and tell about it. Let's stop pretending it doesn't matter. Let's embrace each person's right to shout about it, act on it, and live it. Hooray for the end of DADT!
ReplyDeletep.s. I am avoiding other work so I went on a bit here.
p.p.s. If Greysen turns out to be gay, flaming gay even (I hate this coworker of yours right now), he will continue to be as amazing and perfect as we already know him to be.
Good points JDoc. Shout it from the rooftops if that is the desire! From a legal perspective, I think Don't Ask, Don't Tell, by it's very need to put it into law, made it very relevant to the military in that it created a legal basis by which the military could discharge (if one chose to "tell") based upon sexual orientation. While the intention was probably to give gay and lesbian service members a way to feel secure (by just not mentioning it), it did the opposite, as you stated, by making people feel they had to keep their 'dirty little secret' in order to be 'worthy' of the privilege to serve their country. So many crazy things about that ...
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree - gay or not, G will remain the shiz-nit in our house.