Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Despair

Recently, President Obama addressed a dinner of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington. In that address, he once again pledged to end at the federal level discrimination based upon sexual orientation, including a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law that restricts the service of gays/lesbians in the military. The predicable hue and cry resulted, with the gays/lesbians and the political left saying “when, right now” and the conservative side saying “no, never.”

The truth is that America has always had a history of discrimination. This truth is somewhat all the harder to fathom given our multi-cultural history from our beginning. British middle-to-upper class society dominated the governance and economy of this country from Day 1 in Jamestown. That dominance was unchecked for all of the 17th through 19th centuries. Not until the early 1900s did that yoke begin to break for the other cultural, racial and gender groups.

The Irish were told they “need not apply”; the Jews and Catholics were excluded most social clubs, private schools and politics; African-Americans had their separate entrances / water fountains / sitting and living areas while working as modern-day indentured servants; Native-Americans forcibly surrendered their land and were confined to specific reservations (unless white Americans found that they wanted that land’s resources after all); women had no voting and limited property ownership rights; Asians worked in laundries and restaurants, and helped build a railroad; and Mexicans, once the proud owners of their southwestern lands, became the field hands for harvesting and the gardeners of landscapes. Other groups were similarly relegated to specific niches of American society.

The American War Between The States freed the African-American from outright slavery, but consigned him/her to de facto slavery by ostracization and economic exclusion. But that war was also the first step in bringing out into the open a recognition of the need to end inequality in America. So we thusly began the long, slow, but deliberate march towards the true fulfillment of “all [humans] are created equal.” The three rungs in achieving this movement have been through access to 1) education, 2) economic opportunity, and 3) politics.

I am of the opinion that true fundamental change in cultural beliefs and attitudes takes at least 3 generations to achieve, and only then after concerted efforts and milestones by the parties involved to build the bridges required. Bluntly speaking, you have to wait for the old people, the original ones with their vested interest, to die off and end the “righteous cause” that they continue to espouse. By that yardstick, peace will never come to the Middle East until the original fighters and homeowners in the 1948 partition conflict die off. Ditto with China and Tibet, as well as others. Even so, left unchecked, the hatreds and suspicions can go on seemingly forever, passed from generation to generation in a near blood oath. So the Britain / Scotland / Ireland conflicts remain backdrops after 1000 years, the Sunni / Shiite Islamic conflict remains after 1500 years, and various Mediterranean and Baltic countries still pursue long-held agendas over ethnic cleansing, holocaust, and cultural annihilation.

By that measure of sustained resistance, we have moved forward quite remarkably in America in pursuit of genuine cultural equality, even given how much more remains to be done. Blacks broke into the military during the Civil War and continued through World War II, albeit in segregated units until President Truman officially ended that. In 1919 women became able cast a vote; women were elected as governors of Wyoming and then Texas in 1925; a woman from Arkansas was the first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1932; and FDR appointed the first female cabinet member in the 1930s. The U.S. Supreme Court over time has now incorporated virtually all cultural representatives, though it still remains insufficiently balanced in any given year. A non-Protestant became president in 1960, and a non-white in 2008. Over time, the American workforce has shifted from a predominantly white, married, suburban, male breadwinner to instead reflect virtually all cultures / races / genders in most every profession, though issues of equal pay and advancement continue. Other examples of substantial change exist everywhere.

In most all successful instances, integration and equality have been achieved from the bottom up, moving through the ranks, typically at great pain &/or loss to those in the forefront. But as little children of all races play together, as adults of all cultures and gender work side-by-side, the old barriers and animosities can gradually fall away over time. Not in a grand overnight swoop, but in that plodding but straight-ahead drive that cannot be stopped; 1 step backward or sideways, but always with 2 steps following forward. So when I return to my boyhood home in Arkansas, I drive by the old Negro public housing settlement, and the park and swimming pool nearby set aside uniquely for them. Except they are all thankfully torn down and gone now. There is only one entrance door to all facilities, not “separate but (un-)equal” ones.

In the future, America will undoubtedly continue to refine and improve its equal access to all. We have come so very far from the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the 1950s, the starting line of this past 55 years of our current push to genuine equality. Gays/lesbians in the military will ultimately go the same route and outcome as of female cops – incapable ones will be weeded out, and competent ones will prove to work side-by-side and ably protect their co-workers as well as any straight male. The immediate legal barrier will ultimately fall away, never as soon as we would like, but as inevitable as it must be.
All of the legal and social pushes being made now have to continue unabated. Yet in the end, it is all about personal abilities and competency, while realizing that all other perceived issues are incredibly irrelevant. I am confident that, in 20-30 years when my five granddaughters approach middle-age adulthood, they are likely to look back at 2009 and wonder in amazement what all the fuss was about in the first place.