There's a civil rights struggle going on right now. There are serious efforts to pass a bill to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and to implement employment nondiscrimination for GLBT people. This is proving to be terribly inconvenient for many of you, I gather, from the comments I'm reading.
A lot of people are saying that we should just wait (a week) because we are silly for distracting people from the health care fight right now. They're saying that the DADT protest (and presumably the ENDA blogswarm) are for publicity and attention and we're ruining things by focusing on stuff that's not health care.
Some even apparently question how much Dan Choi really wants to be in the military since he's "doing everything he can to get out" of it.
Then, of course, there are your typical whiny ass "why is he bothering the pressiideennttt with this? Leave Obama alone!" crap. It's stupid for all of you guys to recommend and comment in two diaries the other day about how President Obama threatened the entire Congress to pass health care or he'd make sure they'd get no money, and then keep arguing your bullshit that the President can't do anything to get legislation passed.
This is extremely hypocritical and I wish you would stop. I wish you'd just admit that these stories proved that the President can indeed do more than just say in the SOTU speech that he wants Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed.
Either that or he could have just said in the SOTU speech that he wants health care done and then he could've vacationed for the rest of the year.
Many people on this site are so committed to the ideology of "whatever President Obama wants at a certain time" that you are actually seriously willing to tell gay people that we should all wait for our civil rights because our timing might hurt the president's feelings... which, based on the opinions of you guys, seem to be extremely fragile.
You are not the president's human shields.
I don't think the guy actually wants you to be anyway.
I tell you what: when President Obama doesn't do shit to help end DADT and when he doesn't do shit to pass ENDA, but they pass, every last bit of the credit is going to Congress. Obviously if you think the president is completely incapable of any type of action we should only reward the people who CAN act.
And I really think the people who wrote the comments saying that they don't know if Choi really wants to be in the military and the people who recommended such vile shit can go straight to hell. Do you know hard it is being gay? It's not fun at all. Dan Choi is brave JUST FOR THAT and then on top of it he has the guts to join the military and practically beg them to let him serve openly among a typically conservative, homophobic (removed because that is untrue, I'm sorry) group of people?
Some of you need to shut up and enlist, or just fuck off.
This "just wait" nonsense needs to go. I really think a lot of you guys would've been the types to say "maybe it's not particularly pragmatic to do civil rights marches and demand our freedoms" in the 50s and 60s to a different group of people.
Or, maybe that's it. Maybe many of you are subconsciously homophobic and you just don't want us to gain these rights because of your discomfort with them. Maybe deep down you see us as different from you, not a civil rights struggle but instead some vain attempt for attention.
Maybe you need to think about why exactly you're so ready to ask all of us to shut up and wait.
I'm so sorry that this action is ruining your time reading all the front page post and recommended diaries about health care, as well as thousands of other blogs that exist out there in the world.
Until you start seeing us as one of you, I'm not going to shut up and I'm not going to wait for the right time for you.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
- Martin Luther King, Jr, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
Update: I just got a letter from Mark Udall with a petition to urge repeal of DADT. Please sign!