Tomorrow the U.S. military's loathsome "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy will officially end. Finished! Kaput! Gays and lesbians will be able to openly serve in the armed forces, and America will finally join the 21st century. Hooray!
Here's a small coincidence, we thought: The day before DADT becomes toast, we were notified that next week is Banned Books Week. BBW is a celebration of our freedom to read and a recognition that a lot of really great authors have seen their works get, shall we say, squelched. Just another reminder that when people get freaked out by ideas, they'll simply try to remove them, like gays, from our sight.
(We also found it amazing that among last year's most banned books was Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Barbara Ehrenreich?!? The woman who waits tables and takes other low-paying jobs so she can experience — and share — the plight of this country's hard-pressed working families? What's that about?)
Who can explain it, who can tell you why? In fact, we cats often wonder why right wingers (and face it, it's usually them) ever bother to ban stuff in the first place. The banned books or movies or fashions or people — gays, blacks, union members, women, etc. — almost always get unbanned, and come roaring back or otherwise win in the end. And we all look back at the banners and say, well! Weren't they narrow-minded/bigoted/afraid/downright stupid?
So, Happy DADT Repeal Day. Please make a special observance of it tomorrow, especially if you live in a state that's taken steps to ban (that word again) same-sex marriage. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives, marriage equality will go the way of DADT. We're not askin' — we're tellin'.
(PHOTO: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)
UPDATE: What were we just saying? A federal judge ruled today that the videos from the Proposition 8 trial can be released. This was the trial that resulted in Judge Vaughn Walker's incredible smackdown of California's gay marriage ban. Right-wing marriage-equality opponents had argued against releasing the videos — no doubt because they make their side look so, so bad. We cats can't wait for the commemorative DVDs!
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