I thought I felt slightly more proud to be an American last month:
SAN FRANCISCO — No U.S. service members have been discharged for being openly gay in the month since the Defense Department adopted new rules surrounding the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Monday.
…
Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith told The Associated Press that no discharges have been approved since Oct. 21.
Pentagon: No gays were discharged in past month [AP via WaPo]
Okay, good. But hard to really celebrate something like this. After all, it’s not like there’s a real “win” here. In the balance of negative and positive energy, DADT has long put us in a deficit. Sure, this helps to the tip the scales a little bit towards benign peace. Though the victory comes when any given year’s passage from October into November is marked only by discarded Halloween masks and incoming cranberry sauces, not discarded servicemembers and (supposedly) forthcoming tolerance.
