Ask And Ye Shall Be Told

Sometimes I am totally dumbfounded at what we do in this country. Take the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule in our military. It's been in the news again lately.

Can gay Americans serve in the military and protect our nations's security just as well as straight Americans? Of course they can. So it makes absolutely no sense at all that the federal government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purge our military of gay service members -- including many with valuable skills desperately needed in today's armed forces, such as Arabic language specialists.

What is our great fear of homosexuals? As a drama major and a heterosexual, I worked for years in theatre, through my college years and then semi-professionally at The Wagon Wheel Summer Theatre in Warsaw, Indiana.

As a heterosexual, if you work in the arts you are going to find out what it is like to be a minority group. But here's the thing, and I say this with all honesty and candor: gay people are no threat to me whatsoever. In fact, they are some of the most intelligent, witty, and talented people I have had the joy to work with over the years.

I once performed an after dinner show for Northwest Fabrics. In appreciation, they gave me a white hooded sweatshirt with the Northwest Fabrics Logo on the front. It was extremely comfortable and I wore it a lot.

It never crossed my mind that someone would construe that sweatshirt as "too gay".

One day I was going through the check out line at the local supermarket and the checkout guy, who ordinarily was a stocker, looked at my sweatshirt and said: "How can you wear that sweat shirt? I would never wear a sweatshirt that said Northwest Fabrics on it."

I just smiled and said: "I guess that's because I am much more secure in my masculinity than you are in yours."

And that's the way I feel about the manly men who get their undies in a bundle when they are in the presence of a gay man. As Shakespeare would say: Methinks the man protests too much.

Gay soldiers have served in every war our nation has fought, and currently serve openly in the military of almost every modern industrialized nation on the planet, including 20 out of 25 NATO countries.

There's just no reason that people with the courage and the skills the military needs should be prevented from serving in our armed forces simply based on their sexual orientation.

If we intercepted a terrorist message about a ticking time bomb, and the only available translator was openly gay, would you want him to be fired?

It's time to tell your representative to ditch the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. I already have!