Today: DADT’s Official Demise
Posted by Michelle Moquin on September 20th, 2011
Good morning!
Today is the first day that the repeal of DADT will officially go into effect. Again, kudos to president Obama. Just another big something that Obama has done for our country.
I found this write while perusing the net. I liked it so I decided to post it for today.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: In the Olden Days
By Huong T. Nguyen
At the beginning of this school year, Rowan, my 6-year-old son, held court in his first-grade class about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT).
The unprompted conversation with his classmates went something like this:
Rowan: My mom was in the military.
Classmates: Really?
Rowan: Yeah, but she was kicked out because she was gay. (His peers gathered around to hear his tale.)
One classmate: No, I don’t believe you!
Rowan: No, really, I saw her uniform! In the “olden” days, gays weren’t allowed to be in the military. But now, they can. My mom doesn’t want to go back because she has a family now.
Classmates: (Silent, in apparent admiration for the speaker whose mom served in the military or who got kicked out because she was gay, or because they really had nothing to say.)
Kids and their sense of time! Those “olden” days are not yet so old. In fact, although Congress repealed the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy at the end of last year, tomorrow will be the first day that the repeal will officially go into effect, due, in part, to the intense opposition to the repeal even after its passage.
Tomorrow, like most Americans, I will wake up early and help my kids get ready for school before I grab coffee, get dressed, and drive to work. Nothing exceptional will happen for us—except I will remind my kids of DADT’s official demise. Their reaction will likely be: “Mom, isn’t this old news?”
But tomorrow, in thousands of households across the world, American lesbian, gay, and bisexual soldiers and their families will let out a big collective sigh of relief. Their lives will be much more secure, and the pressure of having to monitor every statement and action will be gone. Starting tomorrow, an Army medical officer, home after her second tour in Afghanistan, could be greeted with public displays of love and affection at the airport by her wife. A Navy mechanic could name his husband as his emergency contact without fear.
A Marine officer could bring her girlfriend to the yearly Marine Birthday Ball. Civilians and straight soldiers alike take these life events for granted, but the repeal will usher in significant, tangible changes in the lives of lesbian, gay, and bisexual soldiers and their families.
DADT’s demise does not simply mean the repeal of an 18-year-old law. While that’s true, let’s not forget that LGB soldiers have been legally discriminated against since the founding of this country through previous iterations of the ban. More than that, the repeal means that hundreds of years of state-sponsored prejudice against LGB soldiers are no longer legally acceptable in at least one form. It means that those who have been discharged or driven out of the military prematurely—likely numbering in the tens of thousands throughout history—are vindicated by the repeal; they have not suffered in vain. And, perhaps most importantly, future generations of our lesbian, gay, and bisexual sons and daughters will no longer endure the same pain, suffering, or devastating loss to their careers as their predecessors did.
The repeal also has far reaching consequences for all Americans. We can take some comfort by looking to certain events that ushered in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s for African Americans as a loose guide to the changes that could occur in the years to come for the gay rights movement (footnote: used for lack of a better, shorter, and more inclusive name). Significantly, only a mere 19 years separate President Truman’s executive order in 1948 integrating black and white troops and the United States Supreme Court’s 1967 decision inLoving v. Virginia striking down laws prohibiting interracial marriages. That’s less than a generation apart, and well within some of our lifetimes, if what’s past is prologue.
Maybe the first graders have it right all along. We adults take things too seriously sometimes. The goal is to work toward a time—perhaps inwhen our kids can say—in 20 years (and here I’m channeling Rowan at 25): “Can you believe it? In the “olden” days, people used to believe it was okay to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. How stupid!”
NCLR guest blogger Huong T. Nguyen shared her military dismissal under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” through her diary-blog series published by NCLR at the end of 2010. This latest piece ends the series. Read Part One: Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way, Part Two: Light Bulb, Part Three: A New Identity, Part Four: The Education of Private Nguyen, Part Five: The Girl, Part Six: No Air, Part Seven: The Truth Will Set You Free, Part Eight: The Trial, Part Nine: The Story, Part 10: There’s A Place For Us, and The Repeal: No One Left Behind.
Nguyen is an attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she resides with her wife and two children.
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Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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September 20th, 2011 at 8:15 am
I will celebrate this day forever. I could have lost everything because of that bigoted rule. Many gays have been raped and they could not tell.
Many of us have been blackmailed for money and things beyond the imagination. Thank God for Obama.
The right hates him because he refuses to continue their policies of hate.
Brooke
September 20th, 2011 at 8:48 am
MIRACLE TRANSPLANT ALLOWS DYING MAN TO LEAVE THE HOSPITAL CANCER-FREE
Imagine a patient with inoperable late-stage cancer of the trachea who is told that all treatment has failed and his tumor is now so large that it is about to block his windpipe.
If we were watching this plot unfold at the movies, we would seem to be nearing the end of a very sad story. Then, in a plot twist that you usually see only on a cinema screen, doctors inform the man that there is one last chance.
He can have a trachea transplant — an operation with one very big catch. The trachea is not from a donor but rather it is man-made — the first ever.
To boost the chance that his body will accept the synthetic trachea, doctors are planning to “seed” or coat it with the patient’s own stem cells, which should — hopefully — keep his body from rejecting it.
With nothing left to lose, the patient agrees to give it a try — and a month after the surgery he is alive, well and able to walk out of the hospital, cancer-free.
This is all real, not from a movie. One very rarely hears of an outcome this positive, and I wanted to know whether it was a fluke — and what it might mean for others in similarly frightening circumstances.
A WINDPIPE MADE OF PLASTIC
I called David Green, president and director of Harvard Bioscience, Inc., which produced the device (called a bioreactor) used to seed the stem cells that covered the trachea.
Green explained that tracheal cancer is rare, but with symptoms similar to many ordinary bronchial conditions, it often is not diagnosed until it is too late.
This patient was fortunate in that the cancer had not spread. The larynx and pharynx — situated just millimeters above the trachea — were both healthy, as were his lungs.
The material doctors used to make the inner structure of the trachea — called a scaffold — was a plastic polymer, a porous and spongy material flexible enough for the main part of the tubelike organ but that could also be made thicker and stronger to create the rings of the windpipe for structural stability.
To harvest the patient’s stem cells, doctors withdrew two cups of bone marrow from his hip bone, which is a standard site to obtain stem cells, says Green.
Seeding the stem cells onto the trachea was a two-day process that involved pouring the cells over the scaffold and literally soaking it in them.
Green told me there are pockets in the scaffold’s porous material that are just the right size for the stem cells, making it “feel like home to them.”
Once the trachea was delivered to the operating room at the Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden, where the transplant was performed, surgeons were able to trim it to make a custom fit for the patient, says Green. The whole process took less than a week.
A GIANT LEAP FORWARD
This groundbreaking surgery has implications on several fronts that could change the face of treatment for a variety of cancers.
Green says that the technique for building the scaffold likely could be adapted to build other tubular structures including the esophagus and the ureters, which carry urine from the kidneys to the bladder.
With synthetic scaffolds available, there would no longer be the need for donor parts, and the long, stressful wait that has always been a necessary part of the transplant process would be greatly lessened.
Another huge benefit: By seeding scaffolds with patients’ own stem cells, those individuals may be spared a lifetime of taking antirejection drugs and dealing with a compromised immune system.
In fact, we already have evidence that the stem-cell seeding works based on a donor-trachea surgery performed in Spain in 2008.
In what was then a groundbreaking step, doctors seeded the donor’s trachea with the patient’s stem cells.
Three years later, that patient is alive and well and doesn’t have to take antirejection drugs.
WATCHING THE FUTURE CHANGE
In light of the ongoing controversies surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells, it is thrilling to see what science is now achieving without them.
Clearly we are just starting down the path of both stem-cell treatment and the possibilities of man-made body parts, and the future looks bright indeed.
In fact, doctors have announced that they hope to begin transplanting synthetic tracheas to patients in the US for the first time in the coming year.
Source(s):
David Green, president, Harvard Biosciences, Inc., a manufacturer and marketer of specialized products used for regenerative medicine, Holliston, Massachusetts. http://www.HarvardBioscience.com.
September 20th, 2011 at 9:35 am
Ron Paul won the California GOP Straw Poll this past weekend. Michele Bachmann went on Jay Leno and spoke at the GOP convention in California. And at the Emmys, Friday Night Lights, though it was robbed of the Emmy for best drama, won in the writing category (for the fantastic episode titled “Always”). Kyle Chandler, who played Coach Taylor—a rare, strong and honorable male role model on television—won an Emmy for best actor and Minka Kelly, who played Lyla Garrity on the show, presented him with the award on stage. Friday Night Lights captured the hearts of Americans because it presented timeless American values and a strong, real marriage (arguably the best ever portrayed), both of which are becoming ever more rare on television.
This week, Florida will become the center of the Republican political universe, Obama will try to raise taxes while his administration deals with charges that the White House is a hostile environment for women, whose ideas are dismissed and not taken seriously, and crony capitalism scandals from Solyndra to LightSquared will continue to widen.
On Thursday, the GOP candidates will debate in a FOX News/Google event. On Friday, the candidates will speak at Florida’s CPAC, and on Saturday, Florida will host the “Presidency V” Straw Poll.
The Republican candidates will get plenty of opportunities to distinguish and contrast themselves. More importantly, though, I hope there is more time in Thursday’s debate than there has been in the previous two for the candidates to focus on and dissect Obama’s failings.
At the very least, everyone who watches the debate on Thursday should be—by the end of it—an expert on the Solyndra scandal.
— Tony Lee
September 20th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Tony,
Your means of mixing politics and the Emmys in your one post helps one to decide to negate your views.
September 20th, 2011 at 9:41 am
Michelle, for the first time in my 17 years of service, I can breathe normally.
Thank you Obama
September 20th, 2011 at 11:52 am
What equalled a few months of good times does not justify the ensuing years of emptiness. I need a man that stands up. A man I can rely on. A man that has my best interests at heart. A man that values his woman and keeps her close. A man who is present.
Today I shed the chains of “one day” you’ve wrapped me in.
My Phoenix has arisen. I leave you in the ash.