You choose to enter a military academy knowing what the rule was and now you’ve decided that you are going out, or should I say coming out in style.
While at the academy, I have made a deliberate effort to develop myself academically, physically, and militarily, but in terms of holistic personal growth I have reached a plateau. I am unwilling to suppress an entire portion of my identity any longer because it has taken a significant personal, mental, and social toll on me and detrimentally affected my professional development.
Was Yale not good enough for you before or did you need a cause celeb to make sure you got in young lady?
If you wanted to serve the public could you not have entered a police academy after college? #9 in your class makes it even worse, it means that you should have known better.
As I’ve said before I’m for whatever makes the military stronger so on the underlying issue I don’t really care one way or the other as long as you can show that one way or the other is a net gain for the service, but this issue has been in play your entire life don’t start whining that you don’t want to play by the rules.
Go to Yale, I’m sure you’ll do well. Have a great life, but don’t go crying to the world because the military continues to follow the orders given by a democratic president and passed by a democratic congress and still maintained by another democratic congress. A military particularly one subordinate to civilian control, follows orders If you can’t follow lawful orders then do something else.
Then again I might be a little hard on you, you’re just a kid and was likely very full of yourself. If you thought you could hack it but can’t, hey it happens. I’ll pray for you and encourage others to do the same.
Memeorandum thread here.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 
Do notice that she did, in fact, “play by the rules”. The rules allow gays in the service, as long as they never, ever, tell anyone the truth about themselves that is allowed, encouraged, and displayed routinely on the part of other members of the same service, and as long as they never, ever, actually have sex. It was not against the rules for her to enter the Academy, remain there, or embark on a military career, and she says – and there is no evidence otherwise – that she did not violate those rules. It was just impossible for her to continue to play by those rules because they’re hypocritical, bigoted, and inhumane, and they required her to deny part of herself while demanding that she dedicate all of herself to the country that had done that to her.
Note also that she obviously could “hack it” by the standards imposed on every member of the military who is not gay. She hacked it better than all but 8 others, out of almost 1200 cadets, for years. The one thing she couldn’t take was the thing that no straight member of the service is required to endure – to deny, hide, and destroy a central part of herself, on pain of court martial, and to live her entire career under threat that any spiteful bigot could destroy her at whim with just an innuendo.
You’re not just a vicious shit, you’re wrong in every statement you make. She did not break any rule. She did better than virtually all of the non-gay cadets who were not burdened as she was. She obviously thought deeply about what she was doing and labored for years under the burden that others were not required to bear, while beating them at every other test. Your stupid and baseless sneering negates none of those facts. But nobody should be asked to sacrifice themselves for the likes of you. She offered her life’s devotion to the nation and was scorned for it by people like you, and after three years of unavailing effort and continual oppression and rejection, she withdrew her offer. You got what you wanted. She deserves finally to get what she is entitled to.
What I wanted? I think not.
Insults aside it wasn’t a question of if she could hack what every “straight” person could handle, it is if she could hack the military knowing her own personal situation and making a choice at that time.
I will readily grant that as a young person full of herself she might have figured she could do it and failed. The fact that she apparently was running an underground blog about lesbian subculture at the academy suggests a way of looking at things contrary to the way the rules go.
As I’ve already said and as you should know (assuming you checked the link) I don’t really care one way or another what the rules are as long as the result is we have the strongest most effective force out there. If it can be demonstrated that it will make the army stronger then by all means I’m for dropping it, if it can be demonstrated that it will make the army weaker than it should stay as it is.
I think that lionizing her for her failure is no more healthy than trying to be something you are not. As people opposed to DADT apparently intend to use her failure to advance a political agenda I see no reason why I should respect that decision.
If you want to get angry, hey that’s fine but if the agenda really bothers you I would suggest you direct said anger at the democratic congress that could have changed the rules since 2007 or the democratic president would could have changed them since 2009. If they have failed you, that isn’t my fault.
I will say your willingness to declare who should be defended and who should not is certainly a vote for the all volunteer army and against any agenda you might have.
But either way thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. I’ll let my readers read your response and mine and make up their own minds.