It's Veterans Day, when we celebrate the bravery and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform.  So it's a good day to reflect on the double sacrifice that gay troops make, and the courage and dedication it takes to serve honorably under a policy that by design dishonors them.

The ultimate sense of not just unfairness in the military's DADT policy, but the lack of common decency, has become more and more evident to most Americans, despite the shrill protest of a few hangers-on, who don't seem to grasp that dishonoring those who honorably serve and sacrifice stains an institution based on honor and sacrifice. It not only debases gay troops, but all troops, something the troops themselves recognize.



And just like the arguments for extending the Bush tax cuts, or Tea Party criticisms of our first black president, the arguments against repealing this shameful policy are disingenuous, but instructive. The battle to repeal DADT is a prime example (one of many, unfortunately) of how an increasingly shrill fringe dictates policy in American politics today. 

If the example of our allies is any indication, ending DADT would change nothing in the American armed services except the underhanded practices of the policy itself (see page 7 of the Army's patronizing comic-book guide to DADT, which explains how second-, third-, or fourth-hand gossip can serve as basis for an aggressive inquiry into a soldier's sexuality). 

So why continue an unpopular policy (inside the service and out) when prolonging the debate is actually proving corrosive to morale?  DADT is not useful to the armed services.  Keeping the policy in place doesn't make the services function better in a time of war.  It doesn't make us safer. 

The fear-mongering on the side of proponents of the policy exposes the whole of their MO.  What might happen if the policy were repealed?  Instead of an intellectually honest, rigorously fact-based approach to answering this question, looking at actual "test cases" — the successful "integration" sans drama of the armed forces of Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, The Philippines, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, and Uruguay, where gays serve without event — proponents of DADT offer up rape fantasies lifted straight from gay porn.

Makes you wonder.

I mean, their fear is obviously based on a fantasy, and one that is fully "fleshed out", as it were. And the fantasy is not coming from the gay troops or their allies. These detailed seduction scenarios are popping fully formed from the ids of guys like Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, who warns, should DADT be repealed, of an increase in the "most common type of homosexual assault... one in which the offender fondles or performs oral sex on a sleeping victim."

Sounds like a victimless crime if ever there were one, to me. Although I and anyone else who's ever given or received the gift of oral pleasure can tell you it's not something you tend to sleep through. But it's no mistake that in Sprigg's fantasy, the "victim" snoozes through his own "assault". Otherwise he would be complicit in it, wouldn't he?

And that's what this is all about. People who are sexually confused themselves assume everybody is. But everybody is not. The hysterical fear of gay persuasion, of "recruitment", exposes those most vehemently opposed to gay rights as, well, confused at best, terrified and titillated of their own very detailed sexual fantasies at worst. I say "at worst" — there are lots of people who act out their sexual fantasies, it's just that most people do it with other consenting adults.

What the most vocal opponents of the repeal of DADT are doing is playing out their sexual fantasies in public — in Congressional hearings, in front of their congregations, in the press. Getting off hiding in plain sight.  It's no wonder they so strongly support gays staying in the closet. 

Veterans Day is a good day to reflect on our values as a nation and how we honor those who make the ultimate sacrifice for them.  Are we a nation that really honors honesty, integrity, and truth?  And if we do, can we really defend these values without demonstrating them ourselves?