SAN FRANCISCO – Tuesday, Nov. 19 the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee will host a community forum regarding military recruiter participation in the annual Pride Celebration. The forum will take place at the Metropolitan Community Church, at 150 Eureka Street in San Francisco. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and the forum will begin at 7 p.m.
The SF Pride Committee wants to hear from community members, stakeholders, former and present military members, activists and others on how SF Pride should proceed regarding providing vendor space to branches of the Armed Services to do active recruitment at the June 28 and 29, 2014, SF Pride Celebration.
The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell opened up the ability of the Armed Services to come into the LGBTQ community to do active recruitment. However, there are still many issues that need to be addressed before SF Pride feels it can make a decision on how to proceed. The fact that transgender people are still discriminated against in the Armed Services is a significant and deeply troubling problem.
SF Pride has invited veterans groups, armed service recuiters and transgender advocacy organizations, among others, to come and speak to the issues involved, and welcomes all members of the LGBTQ community to offer opinions and ideas about this important topic.
Certainly we’re all glad for the end of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and gays and lesbians being allowed to openly work as employees of the U.S. government’s military forces.
But at a time when the U.S. government continues to wage undeclared wars and kill civilians with military drone aircraft, not to mention engaging in continued discrimination against transgendered persons and continuing to hold transgender warcrimes whistleblower hero Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning in prison, letting military come and set up a recruitment booth at the SF Pride festival would be sending the wrong signal.
For those members of the GLBTQ community who fetishize uniforms, the community has never had a shortage of people willing to dress up and help those who want to indulge, without turning to outside organizations!
There are also local peace-oriented veterans groups and groups like Oathkeepers (see Oathkeepers.org) which support the Constitution and using military force only in a responsible manner in keeping with *defense* of freedom in America (not unconstitutional aggression).
Having military recruiters at SF Pride is yet one more slap in the face from the SF Pride organization to Chelsea Manning, who is now caged by people who wouldn’t have allowed her to serve had they known her identity, and yet who has sacrificed 35 years of her life to bring Truth to the American people.
The truth is that repealing DADT has really only given us a kind of equality that can best be expressed by the phrase: “we’re all cannon fodder now” and has exposed queer youth to the coerced-by-circumstance decision to serve as a way to escape the poverty and sometimes homelessness foisted on them by family rejection.
This is not to discount the victory over DADT for people like Lt Dan Choi, who served because he had grown up always wanting to; their triumph is not to be diminished. But having actual military recruiters at Pride, the same Pride who snubbed Chelsea and the same military who snubs trans*, is not just insulting, but degrading and beneath a people seeking liberation such as ourselves.