Temerarious, I Say!

[from 9/29/10]

Sometimes I see a story in the news that is so audacious I immediately think “Whhaat?” and I think, “I have to write about that,” and then I think, I can’t. It’s so audacious it’s not of this world.

Here is an impudent example. This story was in the news six months ago, and I passed it up. A girl was expelled from a “Catholic” preschool in a place called Boulder, Colorado, Planet Z, Galactic Sector D, because she has two mommies. I have placed quotes around “Catholic” because this is surely one of those alien varieties that strains the sense of the word small c catholic to the breaking point.

What would Alien Jesus do? The Earth Jesus certainly wouldn’t deny a preschooler an education because she has two mommies.

What’s that, you say? They didn’t deny her an education? They only denied her one at their school? Well, there we go stretching that word catholic. The THEORY is, that what this school does in the name of ITS religion, is what they expect all of us to do. That’s a corollary of catholicity. So their way would deny educations to all little girls that have two mommies, from preschool on. Nothing special about preschool, that’s just where they nipped this little girl’s non-standard parent-having behavior in the bud.

In another story I HAVE ranted about, two 16 year-old high schoolers were expelled from their private “Christian” high school for being lesbians. My previous rant had to do with the fact that the principal had no business inquiring into their sexuality. But there’s another side to the story, a more impudent side, that begs for additional ranting. Since when do minors even get to have sexual orientations?

OK, I get it, if instead of playing cops & robbers, Johnny plays interior decorator, you can guess which way he’ll swing. But, you only get to guess. The kid’s not fully formed. He can’t know himself, yet. The girls are alleged to have kissed. You’ve kissed your grandmother. Does that make you a grandmother-lover? The answer is probably no, and you are sure because you’re old enough to have sorted it out. If you’re 16, you don’t know what you are, I don’t know what you are, the principal doesn’t know what you are, court is in recess, everybody shut up.

As I say, these stories are so impudent and temerarious, that I ordinarily would pass them up. The only thing that got me to change my mind this time is the contrasting case of Major Margaret Witt. She is the US Air Force nurse who served as a lesbian adult for 17 years, and knew it, and never told. Instead, someone else told, and she was discharged anyway.

My first thought reading that was, am I the only person speaking English here? What does “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” mean to these people? Then I learned the real answer. Not only is the idea to require servicemen and women to be dishonest about who they are, the idea is for the military itself to be dishonest about their own policy.

In public they persist in identifying the policy as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But actually 10 USC § 654(b) doesn’t really say “don’t ask, don’t tell.” It says don’t ask, don’t tell, and don’t be outed by a third party, unless you want to prove in court that you AREN’T a homosexual. But, if you are and you say you aren’t in court, that’s perjury (and grounds for discharge), and if you are and you admit it, that’s “telling,” and grounds for discharge.

So, in other words, the law that everyone has been bandying around, calling it “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and claiming it has some kind of relationship to Bill Clinton’s original presidential order actually has no different effect than the law had before Bill Clinton. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has just been one big long propaganda campaign. Thanks to Maj. Margaret Witt, we now know that!