Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 15, 2010

Being responsible for what we write & where we write it, is a problem. Not much of a “best friend,” was she?

Oh look, here’s Garry discussing ‘responsibility for what’s being written’, how timely.

GEE1A, too many Pibgorn commenters weren’t civil, so on Brooke’s request, made a year ago, the comments for that strip were disabled.

I guess her CO had it in for her. He could have “overlooked” the milblog and pretended he didn’t know about her sexual orientation–unless it was brought to his attention by his boss.

I think in the British military, the rule was that you could do nothing that prevented you from performing your duties. Period. Like carelessly getting a bad sunburn. Being drunk on duty.

No one should be discharged from the military unless they are guilty of some failure or dereliction of duty. Having a personal trait or personality that someone doesn’t cut it. I have a coworker who annoys everybody and no one wants to work with. That doesn’t mean he does a bad job, or can’t be trusted. He’s very reliable and successful at his work.

Funniest damned thing about the internet though, especially with Facebook. For years, people have been paranoid about the government spying on them and scrutinizing their personal lives… we’re doing it, ourselves, people. Willingly!

The government couldn’t possibly have planned it any better.

I served May 63 to May 67. At language school no one cared if you were gay or straight. 4 years in the service and noone in my outfit was outed or dismissed from service.

Sounds like she needs a smarter girlfriend…

Brooke McEldowney is noticeably thin-skinned. A few years ago, there was a lively–but not totally complimentary–discussion at 9 Chickweed Lane at Comics.com. McEldowney shut it down.

Some of these discussants moved to Pibgorn here at Gocomics.com. The rabid Pib-apostles would flag them until they left. It reminded me of Shirley Jackson’s “Lottery”.

I don’t know the reason that McEldowney shut down the comments at Pibgorn, He already had an excellent human filtering system.

Chikuku: In the 19th century, they probably still had floggings too. Is it your point that we’re still cherishing repressed Victorian attitudes, or that we’ve actually become kinder and gentler in how we express them?

GEE1A: Does your browser have a pop-up blocker? If not, you could download a freeware one – they do work. (I use Google Chrome with pop-up blocking enabled, and I get none at all.)

Wildcard24365, right. I’ve been after my daughter to stop making uncomplimentary remarks about her work, but she keeps telling me she has her privacy settings high, none of her co-workers are her FB friends, etc. I’m afraid she’ll get fired … and move back in.

Chikuku: it’s worth noting that a drummer boy ws hanged for having gay sex. Who was the other person and why wasn’t he hanged?

The entire British caste system–at least in the top levels–hangs [sic] on gay male relationships, and has at least since the time of the Tudors. (Elizabeth, the last Tudor, died in 1603.) Although a couple of the Plantagenet kings were so flamboyantly gay that the custom probably is closer to 800 years old.

Never had a lick of trouble in the Army. I didn’t tell and the only ones asking already knew…

Seriously, Larry mentioned language school. I am a three-time grad of the Defense Language Institute. The MI people really don’t care. No one was ever hassled for their sexual orientation. The only people I knew that were thrown out outed themselves and then it was no surprise. It seems they had gotten everything they wanted out of the Army and were ready to move on. I have heard of witch hunts, but I never met anyone who actually saw one. Oh yeah, if you got caught in the act, it is kinda hard to ignore per the regulation.

Early “Americans” feared Native Americans. Then came Chinese, then Communism and “the bomb”, then ethnic almost anyone, now LGBT, well then there’s the sun, bacteria, dogs, cougars/coyotes/wolves and weasels, maybe even hummingbirds. “Americans” fear dang near everything, ignoring the last line of the National Anthem. Maybe it’s because they have to check Google, Wikipedia, or look on Facebook to find out what’s “real” anymore?

Perhaps DADT isn’t really “Don’t tell,” since she didn’t tell. Rather, it seems to be, “don’t let anyone find out no matter how.”

It always was a dumb system.

Chikuku,,,, I thought just having sex in the British Army was a “hanging” offense.

The “study by the pentegon” reported “most GI’s approve or could care less about repealing DADT”. This is just liberal media propaganda! The media, at the end of the article stated– “An actual poll of American Service Personel was never conducted”

Curto, you might have better credibility in insulting others if you could spell Pentagon correctly.

A Person of Interest: Actually, John McCain’s openly gay Chief of Staff has known the senior senator for over 20 years, going back to when McCain was a US Representative.

Sen. Walnuts is not a neanderthal, he’s flip-flopped for purely craven political reasons. And he d-mn well knows it.

More’s the pity, he’s dragged his own legacy into hack/joke status. And I bet his soul dies just a little bit more every time Palin tweets.

Dear Apersonofinterest. My cousin was imprisoned in Hanoi with McCain. Yes, he’s a real Neanderthal. When’s the last time you flew a sortie over hostile terroritory driving an A-6 off a carrier deck dirt-bag?!!

Sounds like friendly fire.

Here at “Bagdad by the Bay” the Gay Holy Land, there was another Facebook accident with backward DADT and the NAGAAA (North America Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance).They sponsor a Gay Soft Ball League that allows up to 2 non-gay players per team. The SF team got busted out of second place and lost their trophy during the World Series, when one of the loser teams complained that SF was cheating by having too many “insufficiently gay” players, (the one married to a woman, and outed on Facebook, wasn’t fooling any one, and the others were shaky) The conduct of the league during the “asking” part was worse than the Boy Scouts. Now some lesbian civil rights lawyers are representing the unorthadox players in a discrimination suit, so it’ll probably work out all right.

In the context of identity politics, it is considered an advantage to be the aggrieved party, so as to gain some sort of group prestige. The problems of bigotry, bias, prejudice, are a lot broader than what has been narrowly defined, to the point where just about any group can be the most aggrieved, and the most PO’d race begins.

Still, SF shouldn’t have cheated, even if they were more progressive diversity wise and had snazzy uniforms. Can you imagine being the catcher for that team and looking around in the dugout and wondering if your teammates were really as gay as they said they were, or are they hiding who they really are?

Mark Bingham, one of the people who led the counter-attack on FLT 93 was a gay rugby player.

After reading all the comments yesterday & today I got all fired up and wrote a 3-page comment. Now I’m too tired to type it in. But what I see as the high points are:

Why does it matter whether you were born gay or were “converted”? Parents seem to worry that if gays teach their children, they will “corrupt” the children. Do heterosexuals successfully change gay children into being straight?

There’s a whole lot of questions, aren’t there? Most of them are answered by nothing but sheer prejudice. You can tell by the amount of hysteria with which they are spoken. Anti-gays seem to be dreadfully afraid of gays. I don’t think I have ever figured out why.

There’s more, much more, but as I said, I’m too tired.

As for being “caught in the act”, it may be true that that makes one’s sexual orientation known to command. While not exactly “telling”, it may be thought to eliminate command’s burden to “not ask”. None of that has anything to do with justice.

A friend was busted in a barracks sweep (his first indiscretion after years of playing it by the book). The many heterosexual couples busted on the same night got slaps on the wrist. The gay couple(s) lost their careers.