Too high a price for our rights

LET'S NOT get hoodwinked into thinking that the only way LGBT people can win our rights is by abandoning our principles.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's insertion of the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT)--and the pro-immigrant DREAM Act--into a bill for nearly $700 billion in military spending is a cynical maneuver.

Many journalists characterize it as a means of shaming the Republicans into a dilemma over Pentagon spending. But that band of bigots has no shame. The really insidious aspect of this defense appropriations bill sprinkled with reforms is the attempt to corral LGBT people, immigrant rights activists and our allies into supporting war funding.

Don't.

I'm not a constitutional scholar or legal expert. If I were, I wouldn't be living in a 400-square-foot pad in Brooklyn with a kitchen that dates back to the era of eight-track tapes. So I cannot offer readers a specific legislative route to repeal DADT, but I can add.

Most of the American population, the president, leading generals, troops, the authors of that noxious, discriminatory legislation--and even 77 percent of Republicans--support repeal of DADT. Why can't this reform, which Obama and the Democrats have promised repeatedly, be passed on its own merits?

Progressives should not accept the idea that the only way we can advance our equal rights is on the backs of our Iraqi and Afghan brothers and sisters. Abandoning our opposition to war and militarism is too high a price.

Exactly what is holding up repeal of this continued discrimination against LGBT people in the nation's largest workforce? The Democrats are using the midterm elections as an excuse for paralysis. But they've held both houses of Congress for four years and the White House for nearly two of those. The Democrats' refusal to deliver the goods they were elected to produce is what accounts for the "enthusiasm gap" everyone is yammering about.

Where are the jobs, social and union reforms, a real end to the wars and occupations, and sane environmental policies? All have been tossed aside for the $14 trillion--yes, trillion!--giveaway to the "banksters" (as my pals at Socialist Worker like to call them).

Please don't tell me that we must be "practical." That slipping reforms into war funding is simply the way business gets done in Washington. Isn't that why activists exist, to challenge the status quo? We're supposed to be the dreamers. Isn't that why we celebrate Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks--because they were dreamers who cobbled together a social movement to fight for their ideals?

Isn't that what we did last year to build the 250,000-strong National Equality March out of spit and chewing gum when none of the media or Gay, Inc. would give us the time of day?

Let's not stop dreaming now, otherwise the right will suck us into their nightmare.

First published at sherrytalksback.