The Republic of T.

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Including the ones to happen not to be heterosexual. The Frontlines, a blog by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund, has a tribute to a gay soldier who lost his life protecting others.

Memorial Day is a special time for Americans who have lost loved ones to the service of our country. The families and friends of the more than 4,000 American service members killed in Iraq since 2003 share a special bond rooted equally in grief and pride, emotions we will share as we mark Memorial Day once again this year.

This Memorial Day is particularly salient for me this year as I remember the life of my friend and colleague, Major Alan Rogers. As many people now know, Alan was killed in Iraq by an IED on January 27, 2008. According to his commander, he shielded two others from the blast, who likely would have been killed were it not for Alan’s bravery. Alan was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on March 14th, 2008, in the presence of more than two hundred grieving but proud friends, fellow soldiers, and family members.

I wonder how they army would have proved that Major Alan Rogers was a threat to troop readiness or morale.

So much has been written out there about the California marriage ruling, and I’ve read so much of it, that I can’t possibly write a post in response to each of them. In fact, some of them I’d just agree with and not add much more. So, it being Friday and all, this seems like as good a time as any for a round-up post of some of the most interesting stuff I’ve come across as bloggers celebrate and critique (sometimes simultaneously) the California ruling.

So, here goes.

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If my dad were alive, I know he’d be hanging the flag in front of our house, where it would stay for the remainder of the weekend. A veteran of two wars, Korea and Vietnam, my father was fiercely patriotic. Yet, displaying the flag on Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day was as much a show of loyalty and respect for those he served with, and — I think — an acknowledgment of that they each carried home a part of those wars inside of them. I learned early on that my father carried his experiences in Vietnam and Korea with home him.

One of the earliest rules I remember learning as a child was how to wake dad up from a nap. Don’t touch him or shake him, I was told. He might be dreaming about being back in Vietnam, or the defensive reflex required to survive there might kick in and the reaction might be violent. So, when it was time to wake him up, we would stand at the door and call to him until he responded, even well into my high school years. Looking back, in think it was a way of not releasing the war inside — the war he carried with him — into our home.

I never knew what my father experienced in Vietnam, or what he re-experienced sometimes when he closed his eyes to sleep. We never talked about it. Even when I wrote a one act play about Vietnam for a high school literary competition. Two of my classmates and I interviewed Vietnam veterans we knew, and placed classified ads to reach more veterans willing to share their experiences. I was surprised by how many were willing, even eager, to talk to three high school boys about what they’d experienced.

But I never interviewed my dad. I was in charge of distilling the interviews into an initial script of monologues that my classmates and I would perform, after they offered their input and edits. But I don’t remember my dad ever reading the script. We performed the play at our county literary competition, and won the chance to perform it at the state competition. But I don’t remember my dad ever seeing the play, or even talking to him about it.

Years later, when my parents came to visit me in Washington, D.C., I took my dad to the Korean and Vietnam war memorials. I watched him walk the length of the Vietnam memorial, stopping at the names of the men he’d known. I witness his silent tears at each stop. Yet, we never talked about his experience. To this day I don’t know what he saw, or what he brought home from those wars.

I think that’s because, though he’d brought home his experiences from the war, he wanted to keep the war — the war inside — out of his home.

Though he passed away just over two years ago, I thought of my dad, and all he kept inside of him when I read about two of the most recent Iraqi veterans to commit suicide. Recruiter Nils Aaron Andersson, who suffered PTSD, shot himself at two o’clock in the morning, on the top floor of a Houston parking garage. Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, who wrote about his PTSD experience, fatally shot his brother and then himself after a cross-state car chase.

News stories about their suicides were published the same week news broke that of a Veterans Administration employee’s email suggesting that veterans with PTSD be diagnosed with disorders that carry a lower disability payment.

An internal e-mail message written by a Veterans Affairs Department employee suggested that the agency avoid giving a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder for veterans and instead consider a diagnosis that might result in a lower disability payment.

The message, dated March 20 and titled “Suggestion,” said: “Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that we refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder, R/O PTSD.” R/O stands for “rule out.”

“Additionally,” it said, “we really don’t or have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD.”

News of their suicides — Andersson was one of 16 recruiters to take their own lives since 2000 — came one week before documents released by the VA gave further evidence of the agency’s failure to address veterans’ mental health needs.

New VA documents obtained exclusively by VCS using the Freedom of Information Act indicate the VA is only paying disability benefits for PTSD to 33,247 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, although 67,717 have been diagnosed with PTSD. According to Sullivan, VCS is calling for an investigation into this apparent discrepancy.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in September 2007 stated that the VA’s "lack of early identification techniques" led to "inconsistent diagnosis and treatment" of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury. According to the GAO, early diagnosis is essential in preventing PTSD’s consequences - which could be deadly.

It’s bad enough that we sent men and women overseas to fight a war founded disinformation, in insufficient numbers, and with inadequate equipment. But, when they come home with deep psychological wounds from that war, and we give them less than the treatment they need, Memorial Day celebrations and speeches ring hollow.

Let’s all pay lip service to Support Our Troops. But if we want to be honest, we should edit those yellow-ribbon bumper stickers to say Support Our Troops — As Long As It Doesn’t Cost Anything.

Let’s acknowledge that this new generation of soldiers and Marines is amazingly motivated and talented. They’re expected to be good killers, good diplomats and ambassadors of American goodwill who operate under impossibly complex rules of engagement in impossibly dangerous and deadly environments.

But if they come home wounded, their brains rattled by the huge IEDs of the new way of war, and if they suffer the horrors of PTSD nightmares and flashbacks, let’s dump them on the streets with the least amount of help and benefits possible, as cheaply as possible.

For sure we don’t want to improve their chances, better their future prospects, by offering them the same college benefits we gave their grandfathers six decades ago. God help us if they all get college degrees and figure out what we’ve done to them.

If my father were alive this Memorial Day, he would still display the flag. But not without anger, if he knew how today’s veterans are abandoned to fight the war inside — the same one he fought when he came home — on their own.

This must be the month for landmark ruling on gay issues. The California marriage ruling was one, now another case may put “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” one step closer to being on ice.

An Air Force major who was dismissed for being a homosexual can continue her legal fight against the military, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals let stand the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which bars the military from discharging gay or lesbian service members as long as they do not reveal their sexual orientation.

Yet the appeals court said the government may only “intrude upon the personal and private lives of homosexuals” to “advance an important governmental interest,” such as maintaining troop readiness or improving morale.

The decision came in the case of Maj. Margaret Witt, who was discharged after a career of nearly 20 years on the grounds that she had a six-year relationship with another woman, a civilian.

Witt welcomed the decision.

“I am thrilled by the court’s recognition that I can’t be discharged without proving that I was harmful to morale,” she said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state, which sued the Air Force on Witt’s behalf in 2006.

Prove that gays are harmful to morale? I wonder if they’ll have as much luck with that as the state had proving a compelling interest in prohibiting same-sex marriage in California. One can hope, anyway.

I don’t want to portray all conservatives as drooling dimwits, but good grief do they make it hard to avoid. Sometimes there’s just nothing I can do about it. Do these people read? Crack open a dictionary, maybe? Or some book other than the bible? Maybe hit Wikipedia or something before sounding off about an issue?

The columnist who inspired the previous post was bad enough. Now Rick Santorum has slithered out of oblivion to offer us his unique brand of brainless blathering.

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I’m going to be on NPR’s News & Notes later this afternoon (1:00 p.m. EST) talking about the California marriage decision, so it seems like as good a time as any to sort out my thoughts on the ruling and its implications.

After recovering from the emotional impact of the ruling, I sat down with the intention of reading the whole thing. I must confess, I only got through the first 90 pages. But after sorting through the legalese, what I saw was a ruling that effectively knocked the legs from under much of the religious conservative (radical right, theocratic, etc.) argument against marriage equality, and even went so far as to speak to some previous state supreme court rulings on the issue.

I’ll admit up front, I’m no lawyer, so I invite any lawyers out there to correct me on any legal issues I miss or get wrong. On the other hand, I know some other gay bloggers whom I respect have philosophical objections to the California ruling, though they’re in favor of same-sex marriage. So, I’ll say up front that I have no philosophical objections to the ruling, nor do I think the court was wrong in making the ruling.

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I probably shouldn’t be giving you advice, but maybe because I’m a progressive, I can’t see someone in crisis without having a desire to help if I can. Besides, a couple of you guys have offered advice and suggestions to one Democratic candidate — not to mention asking questions I assume were designed to be helpful.

So, in the tradition of one good turn deserving another, I’m going to give you guys some advice. Blaming Democrats for the trouble you’re in now doesn’t pass the laugh test, for a number of reasons. Keep pushing that meme, and it will prove as laughable as your new slogan turned out to be.

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Are you kidding me with this shit?

Nope. I guess not. Now, this guy gets handled with kid gloves while spouting this kind of garbage, while Jeremiah Wright gets … well, we all know what he got.

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Not exactly.

The California Supreme Court ruling has brought Bob Barr — presidential candidate and sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act — out from under his rock to make the following statement.

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I’ve got a few posts in the hopper related to the California Supreme Court marriage ruling, but this one moved to the top of the pile as soon as it was brought to my attention. Of all the conservative responses to the California ruling this one takes the cake. I’ve written about the procreative imperative, which the right wing has tried to establish as the basis of marriage. I’ve written an entire (and ongoing) series challenging the rightwing notion that marriage is only for making babies and only for people who can (or possibly could, if miraculously cured of infertility) makes babies. (But not for people who can raise well-rounded, developmentally normal children they didn’t conceive together in loving, safe, supportive homes.)

This, however, makes all of that seem almost logical. Forget about making babies. Forget about raising happy, healthy children. In their increasingly desperate question to narrow marriage down to something two queers can’t possibly accomplish together, they’ve boiled it down to this: in order for a marriage to be valid a penis must go into a vagina.

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