By Dave Guy-Gainer
After the signing ceremony on Wednesday, 15 of us made the trek from C Street to the Mayflower Hotel on foot to have brunch.
For the most part, the group was silent and being self-reflective. Major Mike Almy and I walked together and discussed what had happened to him and the E-Ticket ride of the repeal in Congress. We discussed his future and how it looked so much brighter now than it had less than a week prior.
Arriving at the hotel, Joe Tom Easley stopped all of us and reminded us that the hotel restaurant was where J. Edgar Hoover once had lunch with his male lover every day for the last 20 years of his life. The space where Hoover’s permanently reserved lunch table sat is now a PINK store. How appropriate, I thought.
After we sat down, nearly all had e-mails and voice mails to deal with — mostly from press asking for interviews and thoughts. We ordered a bottle of champagne and toasted the fall of this one domino in the fight for equality.
Then the conversation changed. It became one more like you would hear when a bunch of lesbians and gays sit down for a meal. One person said, “We need to get Barney Frank to look gayer. Maybe darken his hair and put in a few highlights.” People roared with laughter. We talked about Christmas plans — most of which had been obliterated by the call to travel to D.C. We talked a lot about our friends over the years that were not at the ceremony. We teased each other.
When brunch was over, there were heartfelt hugs and back pats and we each went our separate ways. Probably all thinking what I was — is this the last we’ll see of each other or is there a cause that will bring us back together?
I caught myself being myself at Reagan Airport — joking with strangers, opening the door for a lady struggling with bags and kids, telling the agent that I liked her rainbow pin. Wow, I thought. You had become so focused and perhaps a little too humorless.
When I boarded the plane I reached inside my coat pocket to pull out the notes I had made, the list of strategy options we were considering, the confidential list of congressional targets, the board briefing on legal support statistics, my talking points to memorize, my to-do list — but I found nothing in the pocket. That’s when it finally sunk in. I was leaving Washington, D.C., with nothing remaining to do. The passenger beside me looked at me strangely when I laughed out loud with eyes full of tears and said to myself, “Mission accomplished.”
I am taking Aaron Belkin’s advice. I asked him at dinner the other night, “What next?” He said, “A nap, Chief.” So, this old Santa Chief is off over this most wonderful of all Christmases to have cookies, milk and lotsa naps! I’ll be back on Monday, though, to do what I can on the certification and transition. After 10 years of negative, I’ll finally get to help with the positive aspects of change.
Implosion cancelled.
Dave Guy-Gainer is a board member for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who lives in Tarrant County.
Thanks for sharing this story! Gave me a pre Christmas Eve smile! 🙂
Context
No change, good or bad, comes about from a posture of passiveness, lethargy, or (especially) non-involvement. All social change moves toward or from the extremes of cemented, biased, and often hostile and unchangeable polarized viewpoints. Stated another way—we can please some people some of the time…you know the rest.”
Our nation and its history chronicles fervently-fought-for freedoms the latest of which is the DADT repeal, which are the result of struggles between, as I have said, two polar extremes. We are always living in “history” but not always in a “historical” moment.
Dec 22, 2010, we all agree, was such a moment. The great United States of America set in motion steps to declassify gay, lesbian, bisexual (but not transgender) behavior as deviant.
As LGBT brethren, we face the same vitriolic hatred. We live the same lifestyle, with a twist. We are housed in the same acronym and bask in the sunshine of all victories. Despite all of this, we who are T, continue to be sliced and diced by those who hold in their hand the power to declassify transgender from deviant status.
This delineation, not the result of internecine behavior but from those with power to legislate, has time and again surfaced to exclude we who are transgender from advancing our cause which is merely equality.
We shouldn’t have to struggle for our right to line up at the starting line—our freedoms have already been paid for in blood—yet as others before us can attest there is no other path to equality.
Seeing this, and having experienced the phobia (to include a job loss), I have begun a personal campaign of awareness using my ability to articulate what many of us in the T community are feeling. We can wait another 18 years for change—or we can coalesce all of our forces such as the great TAVA, legal, support non-profit groups, and a myriad of other groups. We need look no further than other national groups for structure. Let’s remember “in unity there is strength.”
On paper, we are united (LGBT). In practice we are divided—by others. Let’s utilize the gift of instant and present communication (internet) to finally effect change and make the U.S.A. even more American than it became yesterday with DADT.
As a USAF honorably-served veteran, this is my only agenda.
Love,
Delphi Lomeli, SSgt.
Well, said, SSgt !! You make this Chief proud!
Yes…definitely a wonderful Christmas gift! Thank you so much! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!! (Sorrry, Bushy… I just couldn’t help myself!)
The feeling is now mutual Chief. I would love to someday work with you with our own transgender pursuit of equality. You exemplify what the power of one can do. In unifying, you also show the exponential power of many. I know that I am just as vehemently for our cause as you have been and are for yours. Legislators have spoken loud and clear to our LGB brethren: “you might embrace the T in LGBT but we don’t and never will.” We need not look any further than the DADT repeal to see this.
Delphi Lomeli
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