Coming Out

WHEN I WAS A KID, eons ago, homosexuality was illegal, punishable by lengthy prison sentences. The worst insult a child could hurl at another kid was "queer", and it took me awhile to figure out what that meant. Once I did, I realized how lucky I was (am) not to be gay, and began to imagine how horrible it must be to be gay. Gay people absolutely had to remain "in the closet", for fear of being shunned, ridiculed, beaten up, arrested, indicted, tried, convicted, and incarcerated. Arguably, since then, society has made some progress. Since World War Two more than one hundred thousand people, American veterans have been less than honnorably discharged from the military for being gay. Because of the dishonorable discharges on their resumes, the careers of many gay veterans have languished. Now, there is an organized movement to address and redress this situation, to essentially make all these unfairly treated military heroes "whole", whatever precisely that might entail. For one thing, the military could easily upgrade their discharge status to "honorable". That's the very least they could do. Pressure to do this is being applied, but so far, no results. The process is going slowly, but is fraught, however, with constant bureaucratic detours and delays. Asked whether she thought the slowness was indicative merely of bureaucratic sluggishness or homophobia within the government, the leader of the restitution effort said that she really did not know. Maybe a bit of both. Discrimination against gay people in the military officially ended about twelve years gao, when "don't ask don't tell" was repealed. The struggle for gay and transgender equality, quite obviously, much like the struggles for gender and racial equality, is not yet complete, although great gains have been made. Conservative America is not quite read to "give it up", as witnessed by inane laws such as those prohibiting the mentioning of anything about gay people or racism in public school classrooms. I can remember when women were paid sixty two cents for every dollar paid to men. Now, its eighty two cents, so, whoopty doo, so to speak. Progress. Reparations for African-Americans may indeed be an impractical idea, since, after all, most of the damage had been done well before we moderns were even born. But gay people discharged dishonorably from the military decades ago suffered personally and directly, and still do. That they have still not been given justice and compensation for their suffering is yet another shameful part of Amerian history, culture, and contemporary society. Our good fortune is that we still have time to make amends.