Free The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan

on repealing the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act, and on achieving marriage equality. This will be a hard fight, Vaid predicts, based on grassroots activism in every congressional district. Challenging discriminatory laws couldn’t be more timely: On the day before Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay man in New York City was taunted with anti-gay slurs and savagely beaten by two men. He is currently in a coma.
Lt. Dan Choi is still technically a serving officer. Obama could halt proceedings against Choi. Activists contend Obama could stop active enforcement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell through an executive order. Presidential or congressional action may not come in time to save Choi’s military career. If he loses his health benefits, he has a plan. Choi got a message from an Iraqi doctor whose hospital Choi helped to rebuild while he was there. He said the doctor is “in South Baghdad right now. And he’s seen some of the Internet, YouTube and CNN interviews and other appearances, and he said: ‘Brother, I know that you’re gay, but you’re still my brother, and you’re my friend. And if your country, that sent you to my country, if America, that sent you to Iraq, will discharge you such that you can’t get medical benefits, you can come to my hospital any day. You can come in, and I will give you treatment.’”
Choi ended, “I hope that our country can learn from that Iraqi doctor.”

August 4, 2010

Why Did Obama Fire Dan Choi?
“As we mark the end of America’s combat mission in Iraq,” President Barack Obama said this week, “a grateful America must pay tribute to all who served there.” He should have added “unless you’re gay,” because, despite his rhetoric, weeks earlier the commander in chief fired one of those Iraq vets: Lt. Dan Choi.
Choi was an Iraq War veteran, a graduate of West Point and a trained Arabic linguist. I ran into Choi the day after he received his official discharge. We were at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas, a gathering of thousands of bloggers, activists, and journalists.
Though Choi had known the discharge was coming, he was still shaken to the core. He took out his phone and showed me the letter he was emailed.
Choi announced he was gay on national television in March of 2009. He knew the stakes. I asked why he did it. “I came back from Iraq,” he told me, “and I decided that it’s not worth it—I could have died at any moment in the area that I was, in the ‘Triangle of Death.’ Why should I be afraid of the truth of who I am?”
He went on: “I’ve wanted to go back to Iraq and to Afghanistan, but then I thought, ‘If I die in Afghanistan or Iraq, then would my boyfriend be notified? Or would he have to hear about it through Democracy Now! or CNN—who would be the one telling him?’ And the fact of the matter is ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ forces our families into the closet and into nonexistence, and that is no way to support our troops or the families that allow them to continue to serve.”
Obama promised during his presidential campaign to repeal the law that allows soldiers like Choi to be fired for being openly gay, the so-called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. The brainchild of the Clinton administration, it has led to the firing of close to 14,000 members of the military.
Obama has instructed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to conduct a survey among members of the military and their families about the potential impact of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Sounds reasonable? Not according to Choi.
“I think it’s absolutely insulting that we are having a survey right now, in this day and age. That the commander in chief [was] the first racial minority to achieve that rank and that position was a signifying moment for all of us, whether we’re racial minorities, whether we’re sexual minorities, whether we’re American citizens or not even yet American citizens, it was an absolute moment of vindication for