01 July 2014

A Poster Girl For Equality In The Military

Here in New York, anyone with an IQ above room temperature realizes that one of our local newspapers, the Post, is nothing more than a print version of Faux, I mean Fox, News.

Wait a minute:  At least one Fox News anchor is coming to her senses.  Apres elle, la deluge.

Seriously, though:  Bad as FN and the Post are, there's a "news" source that makes them seem like Utne Reader and Mother Jones.

I'm talking about the Washington Times.  One of its reporters actually believes that a former Navy SEAL who transitioned is actually trying to fill the ranks of the Armed Forces with trans people.  The reporter in question is Bill Gertz, and the "mole" is Kristin Beck, who described her experiences in her book Warrior Princess.

OK, it's one thing to describe Ms. Beck as a "poster girl for a Pentagon effort to include transgenders". But it's still another to say that the effort to allow transgenders to serve in the military is another way Obama is pandering to "special interest groups".  

Special interest groups?  We just want to be who we are, and have the same rights as everyone else.  We want to live with the same confidence we won't be harassed, fired from our jobs, denied housing or slandered because of what we are that cisgenders, heterosexuals and white people enjoy.

As for the military:  Ms. Beck is simply asking this country's Armed Forces to do what nearly all of its counterparts in Western Europe, and Israel, already do: Allow all people an equal opportunity to serve as long as they have the wherewithal to do so. 

As for the Washington Times:  Its founders are in the wrong country, and its contributors and readers are in the wrong century:  The eighteenth ended more than three hundred years ago