So, you’re a soldier, an Air Force fighter pilot and a combat veteran. You’ve earned nine air medals, including one for heroism. You have fought in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Your government has spent $25 million training you and you’ve proved over and over to have been worth every cent of their investment in you. You are a lieutenant colonel, a leader of men 18 years into your career, a fine soldier by every standard of measurement. Well, except for one little thing. You are a homosexual man. So, what does your government do to thank you for 18 years of outstanding service and heroism? They fire you.
The man in question is Lieutenant Colonel Victory Fehrenbach. Two years from retirement eligibility he’s having his career stained by the Air Force by forcibly discharging him for being a homosexual. What bearing being gay has on flying a jet fighter and blowing stuff up and killing people is anybody’s guess. Apparently he did it better than most, what with all the medals and the elevation in rank to Lieutenant Colonel. His record was exemplary. That’s not the Air Force’s complaint. They’re willing to flush away 25 million of our taxpayer dollars because Fehrenbach was both an exemplary officer and gay. So maybe the thinking here is that killers of men should not also be lovers of men in their private lives.
And that’s basically what soldiers are trained for, to be killers of men. Whether you think soldiers are honorable or despicable, that is what soldiers do. Pretty much anybody can join the armed services, and at times pretty much everybody has to when a military draft is instituted. There hasn’t been a military draft in America for many years, and the all-volunteer armed service we employ today are very good at their jobs. They’ve been killing a whole lot of people in recent years. So, why does anybody think that only heterosexuals should be allowed to kill people legally? Do the homosexual killers of men have to settle for being serial murderers back here at home, and thus subject to arrest, imprisonment and possibly even execution for the kind of behavior that earns medals for bravery if they were soldiers?
Doesn’t seem fair. Because as well as being killers of men, soldiers risk their own lives by being the potential victims of the other side’s killers of men. A whole lot of them get maimed too. Like many a draftee in years past often wondered, why should the gays get out of it? Being gay certainly isn’t contagious. Being gay doesn’t mean you cannot be brave or do strenuous things. There have been a lot of gay soldiers, although most of them did not openly admit it. There have also been gay boxers, athletes, policemen and firefighters, professions that require a lot of courage and strenuous activity. So if a gay person wants to put his life on the line and maybe get to kill a whole bunch of people, well, why not?
What are these generals afraid of? Don’t our armed services exist to protect every American? So why not let every American participate. The argument used against gay soldiers is the identical argument once used to deny black Americans their full Civil Rights and the opportunity to participate in every part of American society. That sort of thinking made 15% of the population Niggers, with all the indignity that the term implied. Would any general today fire a hero pilot because he was black? It’s just like that whole gay marriage controversy. It’s only a controversy because people are standing in the way of their fellow Americans’ freedom, sort of the opposite of what America was designed for. Jim Crow didn’t go away, he just started dressing better.
Some people talk about “allowing” homosexuals to form civil unions, like it was our call to allow or disallow any group of citizens the same rights everyone else gets. Well, guess again. It’s not our call, it’s in the Constitution, the piece of paper Colonel Fehrenbach swore to defend even though its full privileges were denied him. We don’t allow our fellow citizens their rights, they have them automatically when they are born or become naturalized American citizens. Any law that denies any man, woman or child the same rights as everybody else is unconstitutional, and any person who actively promotes such blatant oppression is a worthless asshole.
And just what the hell is a civil union but marriage, anyway? But the people who want to create a new sort of civil union, one that is specifically not a marriage, don’t include any provisions for non-gay people to enter into them, thus creating a separate-but-equal institution, the kind of thing that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown vs The Board of Education. This reinforced the American ideal that separate is never equal when the separation is legally mandated.
If you want to be allowed to be you, then you can’t deny Colonel Fehrenbach the opportunity to be himself. If he wants to serve his nation by flying a jet, killing people and blowing stuff up and has the qualifications to do so, well, let him. He’s put his life on the line every time he got into that aircraft and flew a combat mission. He’s more than paid his dues and earned the respect and loyalty of his commanders. And if he wants to marry somebody named Fred, that’s his business and nobody else’s. And then there’s the money involved, too. Besides the wasted $25 million spent on Victory Fehrenbach’s training, how many billions do we throw away buy so busily oppressing 5% of our population?
And what about the human costs? What about the men who could be trained by a man such as Fehrenbach? His experience and knowledge just might save another pilot’s life. How many lives could have been saved by all those Arabic interpreters fired by the Pentagon years ago because they were gay? With enough Arabic interpreters working on intercepted terrorist messages, perhaps 9/11 could have been thwarted. Their absence made the process of deciphering Al Qaeda’s messages a long and tedious one, completed only after the attacks took place. But apparently a lot of people don’t care about that. All they know is that they’ve got Niggers back. Having Niggers to be superior to is very important to a lot of people, and this time they mean to keep them down. Let’s not humor these shitheads by buying into their bigotry. Let Colonel Fehrenbach keep his job and his dignity as a human being, such as it is, and stop this un-American tyranny against 5% of our citizens.