It Is Time To Speak Up For Full Civil Rights For All!

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Those that read the Dog on a regular basis (yeah all six of you) know that he is an implacable torture accountability advocate. This should not and does not mean there aren’t issues which the Dog feels need attention. It is time to get serious about full civil rights for all citizens. Right now, the area where we lag the most is with our GLBT citizens.  

The ancient question goes “What is the measure of a Man?” the Dog would change that to person (yeah, the Dog will own the description of “PC”) in order to answer it. There is a man named Victor Fehrenbach. He is many things, least among them is he is a gay man. This is a man who has been decorated for heroism by the Air Force. He is also being durmbed out after 18 years of service because he is gay.

The Dog would like to talk for a minute about how Lt. Col. Fehrenbach got his Air Medal for Heroism. In 2003 during the push to Baghdad Col. Fehrenbach and his wing man were providing air support in their F-15 fighters. They noticed an Iraqi ambush team ready to hit the front lines of the American advance to the airport. They moved to engage and the wingman’s weapons targeting systems failed. Instead of pulling back, over the next 15 minutes the Colonel and his wing man delivered the entire ordinance each had. First they used the Colonels systems to attack with his munitions then they used the Colonels systems to target his wingman’s weapons.

This required multiple passes on the targets. All that would be brave enough, but during this entire time they were under Automatic Anti-Aircraft gun fire. They had to fly into the teeth of 40 or 50mm machine gun fire to make their attack runs. Add to this the nine times they were attacked by ground to air missiles and you can see how a medal for heroism was deserved.

The Dog is not one to make the warrior characteristics a primary one to judge people by. However if that person has volunteered to be a solider it is important to recognize when they do the utmost to live up to it. That Col. Fehrenbach was willing to put his life at risk to do the job he was trained to do, to support the mission he was given and the larger mission of the invasion of Iraq is something which defines him. Compared to that his sexual orientation is a trivial thing, beneath scrutiny.

The major argument, from the Pentagon, against ending the perfidious Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is that openly gay or lesbian or bi-sexual or transgender soldiers would be a determent to unit cohesion. In as far as they go, they are right, it would damage cohesion, right up to the point where it became the norm and then it would not be an issue. The Dog is always hesitant to draw parallels between African American’s civil rights struggles and GLBT citizens but there is one here. This same unit cohesion argument was made prior to the integration of African Americans into the Armed Forces.

It is true there were problems, for a while, when this first was implemented. However, over time, as soldiers found it was more important how each one supported the others in training and war than what color their skin was, things settled down. This is exactly what will happen if we end DADT. The fact is there are plenty of brave, patriotic GLBT citizens who serve today. In many units they are out to their squad mates. There is not a problem with cohesion, beyond the fear that some prude will take it in their heads to end their service.

This issue of full Civil Rights for GLBT citizens extends beyond the military. It is time for us, as a nation, to stand up for the rights of the Transgendered to live their lives as they see fit. The Dog has exactly no experience in the kind of courage and self-examination it must take to decide you are not gendered correctly and then go act to remedy it. That lack of experience does not prevent him from knowing it should be respected, it must be a hard, lonely and often dangerous road to travel. As we work for marriage and hate crimes protections for those all citizens with a minority sexual orientation we must be sure to protect the rights of Transgendered. To win leave them out is to make a mockery of the idea of the same rights for all citizens that is the rallying cry of the marriage rights campaigns.

Which brings the Dog to the issue of marriage rights; this is an issue that needs our attention nearly as much as torture accountability. In fact the ideal that informs torture accountability, namely the rule of law is the same one this issue is based on. There are times when a society will curtail the rights of some of its citizens, criminals being the primary example. They are citizens but they are restricted because of their actions.

This is an argument used by the anti-civil rights crowd on the Right. It is why they bray loudly the homosexual sex is a choice. The failure of this argument is that we have both laws and Constitutional Amendments that provide a high bar for the State to take the rights of citizens who are accused of committing acts the society does not allow away. This is not at all the case of GLBT citizens.  They have had nothing other than their sexual orientation accused of them, and by that accusation alone they are being deprived of rights that are taken for granted by those of the majority sexual orientation.

This is flatly unacceptable in a society of laws. Why in the world would anyone care about who someone has sex with or how, allowing, always, that the sex is consensual between adults? The Dog values Rachel Maddow for her insights, her keen wit and her logical questioning of the days events. That she is involved with another woman has exactly no impact one way or the other. When the Dog finds her to be wrong about an issue it not her sexuality that is the issue, it is her analysis.

Why should Keith Olbermann have the right to marry and the protections and benefits of this contract with the State and Rachel should not? Is there a quantitative difference in their contribution to our society? Is there some inherent defect in Ms. Maddow? Obviously the answer is no. Aside from some squeamishness by some of the older and more religiously dogmatic of our citizens there is nothing that can be pointed to which would reasonably allow the State to differentiate between the two in terms of granting civil rights.

So, the Dog is asking all of those that are concerned about torture, all of those who rally to the cause of the Constitution, in fact all those who have rights that would like to maintain them to start speaking, firmly, loudly and often about the requirement of a nation of laws to treat all citizens the same. It is in the nations interest and your own to do so.

The floor is yours.

Cross Posted At Square State