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Dan Choi in the NO H8 Campaign (Photo courtesy
of Dan Choi)
Club Trigger held a charity event on August 19th, 2009 to raise funds to help repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The event was hosted to Donna Sachet and included guests Anthony Woods (Congressional candidate for District 10) and Lt. Dan Choi. We caught up with Dan who had a lot to say about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, hate crimes, and why we must go back to the ballot to repeal Proposition 8 in 2010.
Examiner - President Obama said that he will not sign an executive order to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and is instead looking to Congress to overturn the law. His reasoning is so that future presidents could not easily reinstate it. Do you think the president is being fair, or could he do more?
Dan Choi – It’s absolutely unfair. It’s not a matter of should he be doing more or less, but he should just be doing his job. His job is Commander in Chief right now, and he absolutely does have the authority to halt the discharges, but he has the responsibility to work with Congress. I don’t buy this ‘somebody’s going to come in 4 or 8 years from now and reverse everything and start kicking people out’.
The truth is, you see, all of the republicans and conservatives are realizing that the majority of opinion believes we need soldiers right now in a time of war and for our national security; it’s not an issue. Those people who say it can be undone, I think that’s the worst thing that any leader can say. What a leader needs to do is say, ‘even if in the bogus possibility that it might get undone, I am in charge now and this is what I’m doing because it’s the right thing to do’.
I hear other arguments also, and I’ll just throw a bone to the people who are against my way of thinking. They also say, “well, President Bush,” you know, instead of looking forward, they’re looking backwards. “President Bush did everything by executive order. Now we have Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, and all these things that were done by him overstepping his bounds and working unilaterally. President Obama shouldn’t do the same thing”. I understand where they’re coming from. They don’t want him to do the same thing that we’ve been dealing with for 8 years. I don’t buy that either though. When you take a look at why a President has that authority, we can’t just say, “well because somebody else used that authority, it makes it wrong for somebody to use that same authority for the right purpose”. Here we have the opportunity to do the right thing, and not to run away from doing the right thing, and not to use excuses. I would say as a leader, as a combat infantry officer, as somebody who has led soldiers, that the number one responsibility is not to the fears of the next platoon leader or the past platoon leader; it’s to your soldiers right now. I think it’s the biggest disservice to our soldiers right now.
Dan Choi in Iraq (Photo courtesy of Dan Choi)
He has a responsibility to those soldiers right now, and to America right now. I’m not just talking about the gay soldiers. I think he has a responsibility to the straight soldiers. When you look at the units that are essentially ripped apart because of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell because one of the soldiers is honest, you owe it to the entire unit not to split it apart. You owe it to the entire unit not to rip out Arabic linguists, Iraq veterans, people who are willing and experienced, people who trained at West Point, people that have served honorably, and actually live out their army values of integrity, courage, and honor. It’s the biggest disservice right now for anybody to do that. I’m not just saying the president, but senators are also guilty as well for punting it back and forth between themselves and the White House. Even Bill Clinton who recently said that the gay community did not rally enough, that’s another copout. It’s not the characteristic of any leader to blame someone else. Whatever happened to that leadership? That’s essentially what we’re asking. They should do their job, and I think it’s correct for us to demand that, and not to be given a copout or an excuse.
Examiner – So do you think it would be fair for Obama to sign an Executive order to put a cease on discharges for now, and then to have the Senate still move forward at the same time?
Dan Choi – It’s not just fair, it’s the right thing to do, because we’re all in this together. I think the overwhelming attitude in Washington right now, even with the super majorities that we have, even with the landslides that people have won their elections by is, ‘well I’m not brave enough to do this, and someone else has to do it’. That’s really the issue. The thing that I’m most disappointed about is not what kind of political capital one uses, but the fact that nobody is actually stepping up. Senators and congressmen and those congressmen that have not co-sponsored HR 1283 (Military Readiness Enhancement Act) they’re also kicking out soldiers, and that’s what people don’t realize. It’s the one thing that gay people have not done enough. We are the bosses of these congressmen. We need to stop asking for access, and stop asking for invites. We need to get over those things. That’s not what changes the world. We are major donors to these parties. We put them first on our plate, but they put us last. After health care and cash for clunkers, and it’s going to be after every single thing that they want; we’re going to be finally something that just sort of is thrown in to some kind of maybe.
Examiner – So since you mentioned the LGBT community being major donors, what do you think about the fundraiser that happened about a month ago when Biden went over to the LGBT community to ask for money during PRIDE month?
Dan Choi - Our leaders betray us. I’m talking about our advocacy leaders. They don’t advocate for anything, except for our own second-class citizenship. When they buy into that and when they attend those things, it’s essentially rewarding our leaders as if they’re our bosses and we’re expected to go to their little parties or we’ll get fired, or we’ll get fired for being gay; we’ll get fired from the gay community or whatever. We’re not going to lose our job to be their boss. And so, for them to snub us with ‘here’s an invitation but I’m not going to do anything for you’, we should say no. That’s when we say, ‘I’m your boss and I don’t deal with that. Essentially they’re being insubordinate to us’. We have to wake up and say ‘we are the masters of this operation. We are the commanders here. Not you all, so we’re not going to be satisfied by people who just do some fundraising and expect us to continue feeding their bigotry and feeding their double talk; to say one thing in a campaign and then to basically deny us every single thing that we deserve when we put them into office’. That should make us so much angrier, and I’m not seeing that anger from the national groups, these advocacy groups. In the end, I feel so passionately about this, I don’t consider them advocacy groups anymore. I think that they’re also, in addition to betraying us politically, perpetuating the stereotype of our weakness and we owe it to ourselves to stand up, because basically what they’re saying is ‘ok, we will be happy with a little cocktail party because that’s what gays do. That’s all we want is to have parties and dress up in feathers and that will be enough for us’.
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Dan Choi in Iraq (Photo courtesy of Dan Choi)
Examiner – Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) is the one that’s spearheading the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell movement right now, and the last time I checked, he had 168 co-sponsors. He recently said that the time is coming when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be repealed. He said it will go up for a vote soon and he’s pretty sure that it will be repealed and on Obama’s desk within a few months. Do you think that’s a realistic timeline, or do you think that that’s more stalling as usual?
Dan Choi - The time is coming because we’re making it come, not because we’re waiting for something else to happen. If they put the bill to a vote now it would pass based on the votes that everybody’s counted. When you say that there’s 160+ people who are co-sponsoring the bill, that’s not counting the people that say I can’t co-sponsor it, but I will definitely vote for it. When they realize that their names are now being put on record in history as either being for or against national security, I think it’s so obvious that it’s going to pass.
Examiner – So when you were on active duty, your team didn’t show you any discrimination, right? They knew about you and they were ok with it?
Dan Choi – We had mutual gay friends. I was in the closet to a lot of my active duty friends. For a total of about 9 years, I was really closeted. I told absolutely nobody. I didn’t tell my parents, I didn’t tell my sister, and I didn’t tell anybody who was in my unit, but we had mutual gay friends. My friends who were in Iraq with me, we just went out to the clubs and there was this gay civilian guy that hung out with us. One of my straight friends was like ‘it’s so cool to have a gay friend for once’. My boyfriend and I talked about it later and were like, if they only knew.
Examiner – You know, I lived in San Diego, and I worked at a gay club when I was 21. We had a military night once a month where you got in free if you showed your military ID, and that place was packed with military people. The amount of military guys that would come in would surprise people.
Dan Choi - I was doing a radio show and I was talking about how under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, you can go to gay bars, you can go to local rallies, and you can march in the gay PRIDE parade. Somebody called in and was adamantly saying, ‘that’s not true. You can’t do that’. So I said, well why would they give discounts at gay bars if you couldn’t go in there?
Examiner – You know, you mentioned that you thought it was unfair for straight people in the military as well if gay people taken out. You thought it kind of ruined the unit. What do you think about when you hear stories like the one of August Provost III, the gay seaman in San Diego that was shot and burned? Do you think Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell creates these kind of situations, or do you think that maybe abuse towards gay people would grow if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed?
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