Whenever I hear arguments against nationally recognized rights for homosexuals, they never fail to explicitly and implicitly label gays as irresponsible, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. I have never encountered these mythic mythic gays who cannot suppress their manic sex-driven desires and who seek not only to display their preferences to the world, but to convert it to a similar lifestyle.

Then again, I’ve never encountered Harvey the Rabbit.

For some reason, though, these monsters outside the closet cause great concern for some who believe their influence may negatively impact he military – an organization designed to conquer fear.

Reading a Columbus Dispatch article about gays in the military and those who have been kicked out under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” I was surprised to see the Family Research Council’s Vice President Peter Sprigg weighing in.  Maybe he’ll talk about the negative impact of war on families, I thought.  Surely there has never been a war in which families weren’t torn apart, leaving homes pillaged and burned, and women and children raped and killed. Those things aren’t good for families.

My expectations were too high.

Mr. Sprigg instead commented on why gays should not be allowed to serve in the military. “People in the military are forced into situations with an extreme lack of privacy, in the barracks, in the foxhole…It is unfair to put people in the military in a position of forced intimacy with people who may be viewing them as a sexual object,” the article quotes him as saying.

Aside from the lack of regard he showed for the effects of war on families, two things immediately stood out to me. First, I think it is unfair for the literate populace to be exposed to unrivaled idiocy. Secondly, if I were in a foxhole, I would be more worried about the bullets whizzing overhead than about the sexual preference of the soldier next to me. 

And then I remembered a quote from George Orwell’s 1984. “If he were allowed contact with foreigners,” the excerpt goes, “he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies.” Extended to include our own citizens, we may see more clearly the similarities between the foreigners Orwell describes and our fellow citizens who happen to be gay. It is important that we recognize them as citizens who deserve and require the same rights, privileges, and opportunities as those for whom sexual orientation is not a political barrier. 

Ignorance and bigotry carry with them an overhanging specter of fear. I’m not sure what fear it is that drives some to discriminate against gays in general, but I’ve begun to wonder if they don’t fear having to show gratitude to homosexuals for giving the last full measure of devotion. They may fear owing their freedom to someone who was not accorded the full range of privileges for which they fought – and then being obligated to respect them for it. A good measure of a country is how its citizens treat those who have given their lives, their deaths, and themselves in its defense.

It amazes me that it hasn’t yet been a hundred years since women were given the right to vote. That is to say, it hasn’t been a hundred years since the government stopped preventing them from voting. It is a right with which they were endowed, but restricted from using. If that lesson teaches us anything, it should be that however improbable necessary change may be, there comes the time when a small group of committed people find it incumbent upon themselves, and find allies in others, to demand and secure the dignity to which they are entitled.

There will always be those who cannot or will not understand the worth of human dignity and the value of interpersonal respect. They will not wish to live in an America that pursues a future of tolerance and good will. My only suggestions are to go somewhere else and stop shoving it in our faces.

Tim Hoffine is a sophomore in international studies and journalism. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].