WhackyNation

A friend of mine has been encouraging me to get back in touch with some of my artistic roots.  So Patrick invited me along with his friend Matthew to photoshoot the Gay Pride Parade in Seattle last weekend.

30 years ago I was really into photography.  I started my career as a TV news film photographer and in my spare time roamed the Portland countryside with my Nikon F and lived my life through a lense.

Well, 30 years of career and kids and family and all that, and my photography interest and abilities went wayside.  My older daughter Lyza has the artistic ability in the family and has a far better eye than I do.  She’s been working at photography for over ten years and sells her photos to Northwest magazines and newspapers.

I was given a Nikon D80 last year as a gift.  Damn digital stuff.  Too confusing.  So it basically sat and when photos were needed; it was lot easier using a pocket-sized digital camera.

So, Patrick said, “Enough!”  And he challenged me to use the D80.  So I took it to the parade last week.  I shot everything in jpeg format … and I regret I didn’t save the shots in raw format so they would have finished sharper.  I never took the camera off automatic as I am still uncomfortable manually controlling shutter speed, aperture, etc.  But, the results were pleasing, and I am looking forward to learning more about this camera.

I’m posting a link to my first Flickr.com upload for you to see the shots if you care.  WARNING: there is nudity, including full frontal, so don’t go to the site if you’ll be offended.

By the way, I think I was about the only Republican at the parade.  Every Democrat politician was, however. 

Except there was one who wasn’t in her place where the parade started even though she was Grand Marshall. 

In this wacky but wonderful nation, history has a habit of repeating itself in the most remarkable and surprising ways. For example, a New York Times report just this week tells us that “the Army and Air Force discharged a disproportionate number of women in 2007 under the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that prohibits openly gay people from serving in the military.”

My mind went back immediately to those Second World War days, when the Women’s Army Corps was created and a flood of women volunteers entered the military, most of them to do clerical and similar work in order to free males for duty in the infantry and other divisions, as well as for flight duty in the Air Force.

The year was 1943. I was in the Army then, and my buddies and I could not help notice the caliber of women who had decided to join the military. It didn’t take long for us to recognize the fact that a large number of the new women recruits — perhaps a majority of them — were lesbians.

That didn’t bother us. The fact that so many women had volunteered to join the service to relieve men for frontline duty encouraged us to congratulate the women. We didn’t really care what their sexual preferences were, so long as they had enough patriotism to take an active role in the military.

All went well in those early war days as the major task at hand — the defeat of Hitler’s Nazi forces and Japan’s armies — occupied everyone’s mind in our battles on two fronts.

After Hitler’s defeat and the atomic bombing of Japan, we noticed a decided change in the attitudes of the WACs, most notably the lesbians.

The lesbians wanted out, and the sooner the better. And the Army and Air Force were just as eager to bid them farewell.<. That’s why this week’s report seemed to be a case of history repeating itself, even though the wartime background was missing with the new announcements from the services.

The Pentagon refused to divulge the exact number of gays and lesbians in the large number of discharges in 2007 and this year, but it was clear that many of them were due to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, under which openly gay men and women are prohibited from serving.

It was also disclosed that the Army discharged 302 soldiers under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, signifying that the discharges were for men and women who were openly gay or lesbian. That was an increase in the number of such discharges from the 280 of the year before.

Under the policy, the Air Force dismissed 91 persons in 2007. The Navy, meanwhile, disclosed that it had discharged 166 persons under the policy. For the same period, the Marine Corps discharged 68, an increase over the 64 the year before.

Has the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy been a success one, or should the Pentagon revise it or get rid of it altogether? It seems to me that the large number of gay-and-lesbian discharges indicates that a totally new policy should be created. Why not find out at enlistment time whether recruits are gay or lesbian — and deny them entry into military service. Wouldn’t that save all hands a lot of grief?

It could have been expected. In the balmy, wacky state of California, and especially in the judiciary, where common sense seldom prevails, the state’s Supreme Court has just made another colossal boner in declaring same-sex marriages are valid, placing California next to Massachusetts in the zany column.

And the California court did it by a bare majority, 4 to 3. That means it will left to an uprising by the sensible people of the state, as well as its legislature, to undo the court’s terrible decision. The question remains: Will the people now persuade their representatives in the legislature to kill the same-sex-marriage law?

Lost in the confusion and tirades against the Supreme Court is the simple, logical, and non-abrasive proposal to put the same-sex-marriage argument to rest for all time. It is a proposal I have been making, along with many other sensible observers, to solve the national debate on the issue.

My proposal should satisfy both sides and retire the issue to the ashcan forever. Under the proposal, this preliminary statement should be made and accepted by both sides, including the Religious Right: No matter what laws are passed or not passed on the issue, gays and lesbians will go on living with their partners, as the law permits in every state.

It has been ever thus in the history and it will continue to be so, regardless of the high-powered opposition of certain religious groups. The Lord made certain people gay, and no matter how long and loud the anti-homosexual fringe complains, they will live their entire lives that way.

Some of the religious organizations keep telling us that gays don’t have to remain that way and that what they call “simple treatment” will reverse their sexual orientation and permit them to lead what are called normal lives. However, the “reversal” argument has never been proven to be valid, despite a very few examples offered to prove the “simple treatment.”

To proceed with my proposal, then, it should be a simple thing for all 50 legislatures and Congress to adopt a plan already accepted and proved worthy in many states. That plan is to substitute “partnerships” for same-sex couples. In the states that have acted, the term, “civil union,” has been used, and it accomplishes the same thing as partnerships.

The term, “marriage,” would be reserved for the usual man-and-woman arrangement. Each state could then decide which privileges and programs would apply to both marriages and partnerships. It is a solution that is so simple and sensible that I don’t understand why anyone should object to it.

As an adjunct to the partnership proposal, I would heartily endorse the compilation of a book detailing the names and accomplishments of a great many homosexuals in history, who have contributed so much to all segments of society — whether it be in the sciences, history, medicine, all the arts, and in so many other categories.

Why don’t our political leaders at the federal, state, and local levels show some courage and embrace the “partnership” idea? Isn’t that why we elected them?