Should Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Be Repealed?
A High School friend (we will call Mr. Cars) I reconnected with on Facebook recently sent me an intriguing message/musing about DADT (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.) I have reprinted it here in its entirety (with permission.)
Have you weighed in about the current push to end don’t ask/don’t tell and remove the prohibition against gays serving openly in the armed forces?
Before putting you on the spot for your thinking, here’s my streamoconsciousness. I’m against removing the requirement that folks attracted to the same sex in the military keep that to themselves.
I haven’t read/studied the issue, and I’ve only come at it from the perspective of the armed services being very peculiar functional and goal-based organizations, not analogous to other subcultures, associations, and the culture/society at large.
You don’t have to do or accomplish anything in particular to be a citizen. Born here? Congrats. Most of us aren’t required to promise or take any kind of oath to be/remain Americans. It’s automatic no matter what we think or say. Even breaking the law doesn’t get citizens kicked out of the county. It can get us punished, because the alternative is anarchy. But for those of us for whom citizenship is automatic, there’s not much we can be/think/say/do to be disqualified from citizenship.
The church says bring all your past, problems, and perversions and we will take you as you are. But contentedly stay as you are, and you’ll be disciplined, maybe even kicked out. We promised or took oaths. Having been raised from the dead spiritually and desiring to be transformed are the qualifications for joining/remaining. Like me, members can show a remarkable lack of progress and be shot full of conflicting and troublesome beliefs/views/confessions/behaviors and still…we’re in.
Ex-Gay = Straight?
Rose writes:
>I don’t see our “thinking” has changed at all.
Hmmm. I preceive there being less suggestion that ex-gay = straight. You don’t think so?
>All of the questions you have asked are available in short form in many areas across this blog and the Exodus website.
Well, I know. I guess I wanted some analysis on how you got here, rather than where you are. I know your testmony, it’s more that it seems like a shift over the years. Maybe it’s something that’s happened gradually enough that you haven’t noticed it. Or maybe Jay and I misread? But if you do concede you’re evolving (hope I am too), then what do you think drives that? Surely it’s clear that the ex-gay movement seemed to push “acheiving heterosexual marriage” as a goal or idealized outcome much more a few years back?
Originally posted as a comment by Rose on ETC: Everyday Thoughts Collected using Disqus.
I’ve never, and I don’t think Exodus ever, believed or suggested ex-gay only equals straight and married. Anyone who knows my story … knows that I don’t believe that is the only option for people living with or once had same sex attractions. I don’t even believe that is a complete or proper framework for the debate.
Sometimes I have used these labels but I do not want to ever be known simply as gay, ex-gay or straight. I am Randy <– The Advocate loved that one. (I said the “I am not gay or ex-gay …” in the full page ad in the LA Times.) I reject these labels. I tried them all on (rarely since becoming a Christian) thinking that they might fit, even flippantly up through the past few years … and I always regretted it.
The pigeonholes are so ingrained that most people don’t want to consider there is a “beyond” for all of those labels. Yet I know there is because that is what I live.
But then many people demand instant answers and absolutely refuse to talk outside of the constructed frame of reference those pigeonholes provide. In fact quite a few people are absolutely intolerant of challenging that construct. It is tempting to take the easy way out and try to communicate within that construct. And more often than not, when you do make the distinctions (which we honestly try to do in every interview) they are ignored. It doesn’t profit the infotainment industry to report our explanations and nuances. It doesn’t profit our opponents to repeat anything other than the sound bites that work toward their goals. And their goals are definitely not to explain our reality the way *we* see it. Their echo chamber has been highly successful among their own but our movement has grown by leaps and bounds because we are not simplistic, legalistic dunderheads.
Even this post will be picked apart and reframed to fit their goals for how people view us. And they will do so with fake question marks and their “need” for clarification (read verbal double bind traps, arguments from fragments or silence and ad hominem.)
Some see us as an “ex-gay movement.” That has never been the way we see ourselves. We are a ‘movement’ for sure but we have always been about a whole heck of a lot more than what “ex-gay” implies. We have always been much more than those seeking notoriety at our expense have allowed for. It’s a good thing I don’t look to them for definition or direction.
Now, some, a few, in our movement did uphold biblical marriage as the main proof of healing (especially in the early days and decreasingly so up through the ’90’s). But … when you are talking about tens of thousands of people (hundreds of thousands?) and hundreds of ministries over 33 years, with millions of people talking about it, you are going to get all kinds of messages. I am glad I came up through a ministry that did not have this limited view or I would have walked out quickly because being “gay” was the only thing I knew. I never thought I would not be same sex attracted so it wasn’t even a goal at that time. My only goal was to get to know the God I fell in love with even more and to “abide in Christ.” (discipleship.)
The media, and activists, loved highlighting those who emphasized marriage and found it convenient to say that was our only goal. They reduce us to that being are only goal but I have never been told and I have never told someone they had to be heterosexual and/or married to be “whole,” “free from temptation” or to live in congruency with their faith. At the same time, many have moved into marriage and have every single right in the world to rejoice in that outcome for their lives. It’s a beautiful thing.
I also believe that being content in Christ as a celibate person is a beautiful thing. Just as beautiful and committed, in a different way, than a married couple.
And, for what it is worth, 16 years ago I was 100% attracted to men and now I am predominantly attracted to women. <– That’s not ever been the goal but it has happened in my “post-gay” journey (not identity.)
I don’t consider myself any “less than” for not being married. A lot of the reasons I did turn to a gay identity and homosexual behavior were legitimate needs. I stewarded those needs toward ways that I think are truly the best ways to meet those needs. Some of the reasons I turned to a gay identity and homosexual behavior would also be defined by my faith as sinful so I did pursue ways to live in obedience to what I believe to be true. Doing so was not harmful or hateful but freeing to me. As a result … the drive toward homosexuality and the gay identity/community has greatly diminished to the point that I seriously have zero desire to pursue either. That doesn’t mean I can’t be tempted.
My goals were to find my identity in Christ alone and to determine what I wanted to do with feelings and yearnings to be able to live in a way that I determined was in line with a biblical sexual and relational ethic. That is what freedom from homosexuality looks like to me and most of the people I know in this movement. I believe I have found success (along with thousands of thousands of others) in both areas (identity and behavior) and communicate that with those of like mind or are interested.
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed