See No Gay, Speak No Gay, Admit No Gay

All this talk about Don't Ask, Don't Tell   That sooo many serve in the military -- silently, but dutifully is nothing new.   One can only wonder at the number of gays who have died in our wars thus far -- especially in times when it was far more taboo then it is today.  

I don't imagine many men who were out of the closet during the Great War or WWII.  One of the primary reasons given for not admitting homosexuals was the belief that they would be easily compromised since they were living a shadow life  and that they could be easy targets for espionage and other hi-jinks. Fear of blackmail, exposure, community ostracizing.  In the past, the life of a homosexual was perilous at best in the civilian world.

But the time of calling gays in the military a "dangerous social experiment" is past.  Other countries have successfully integrated their military.   22 out of 26 NATO countries have military's that allow gays to serve.  In those other countries, homosexuality is generally illegal. 

This all makes me wonder how good old Abe L. might have handled this if he were around today.

The Gaysburg Address

Eleven score and fourteen years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Today we are engaged in the Great War on Terror, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a battleground of that war - the homefront. We have come to determine who will be able to continue to give their lives that that this nation might live. It is altogether tacky and inappropriate that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not determine - we can not judge - we can not make this decision. The brave men and women, gay and straight, who have struggled for our freedom, today and in the past, have decided it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they have already done.

It is for us, we who are living free because of their sacrifices, rather to be dedicated and thankful for the work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on in silence. It is rather for us to be, from this point forward, now dedicated to the great task remaining before us - respecting the lives of these honored men and women, and take increased devotion to that cause for which they are willing to give their last full measure of devotion.   That today,  we here highly resolve that these soldiers shall not have served in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.