Code Of Conduct

There has recently been a lot of talk about the US abolishing their ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy in their military and finally let gay and lesbian servicemen openly serve their country as gay and lesbians. There were even two servicemen who chained themselves to the fences of the white house as protest against the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, they were Cpt. Jim Pietrangelo, Lt. Dan Choi. The seem to have the full support of many American GLBT groups, although there are now legal action taken against the two of them, and their court case is pending.

Lt. Dan Choi at the National Equality March

One of Obama’s promise is to ‘try’ and liberate the gays and lesbians in the military and allow them to serve openly, although he has yet to keep to his word… like a lot of other things he promised. (don’t get me started on that guy… how on earth he won the nobel peace prize eludes me)

Well, coincidently I just read a gay book on the US military. I was pretty proud of myself for buying this book, because it was an actual paperback edition of the book that I bought from Borders in Melbourne. It actually took me a lot of courage to walk to the GLBT section, picked a book, and actually paid for it at the counter. Big step for a small closeted gay :)

The book is entitled Code of Conduct. It’s a fiction about gay and lesbians serving in the US military during the Clinton era. That’s the pre ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ era, when gays and lesbians in the military had to serve in fear of people finding out about their sexuality. There were apparently ‘witch hunts’ for gays and lesbians serving in the military whereby if they were found out, they were dishonourably discharged and had their pensions removed… How sad right?

The story is pretty insightful into the lives of gay and lesbians military, how they live in fear of getting found out by their superiors... Kinda a little like how I’m currently afraid of how my parents or friends will find out about my sexuality. Haha, so at a certain level… I can sorta relate to the characters. Anyway it’s a great book and it’s a read I’d recommend any day.

One of my favourite part of the book was when the main character tried to explain why straight men serving in the military are afraid of gay people. It’s not because they are afraid that gay guys will look at them in the showers, rather it’s because they are afraid that they are so unattractive that even gay men don’t find them attractive and not look at them in the showers. He suggests that because in his opinion a lot of people joining the military have personality complexes or self esteem problems, that’s why they join the military to find themselves.

I personally think if a country stands for freedom and promotes freedom of speech... Then military personnel should be allowed to serve openly and freely express themselves. Although one might argue that in joining the military you sign away your freedom of thought to higher authority, because you only obey orders from higher authority and lead your subordinates… your not suppose to actually think? LoL

Signing out.