Dan Choi Talks DADT with Rachel Maddow

May 8, 2009

As promised, Lt. Dan Choi returned to the Rachel Maddow Show last night for his first interview since being fired for being gay.

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I’m not sure if I agree with Representative Sestak about continuing enforcement of DADT. On the one hand, yes it’s a law and the government should enforce laws. On the other, there are certainly some laws that we enforce more stridently than others. The Obama administration has already said that they won’t be as attentive to laws against clinics in California that sell marijuana for medicinal purposes.

There are several ways President Obama could manage non-enforcement. He could sign an executive order saying that the DADT laws won’t be prosecuted. He could de-fund the DADT line item in the budget. He could just pull Defense Secretary Gates and tell him to knock it off.

Like I said, I’m not sure where I am on that issue.

But one thing we agree on: Repealing DADT must be a high priority. The US military has been weakened for far too long by the law. Dan Choi, Sandy Tsao, Amy Brian, Todd Belok, and many others are having their lives effectively ruined for no reason other than prejudice.

And to be blunt, this is America. We’re supposed to be better than this.


  • AzPatriot

    As a Marine, I have mixed feelings about DADT. I was always in an infranty combat unit that did not allow women to serve in our units. We had mostly guys from Texas, New York, and the heartland of the US. To these guys, tolerence to homosexuality was out of the question. I’ve friends that got out and later told me they were gay but would never anounce that they were gay while in service because of the marine environment.

    I started my Marine career before the DADT polciy by Clinton. After the policy, we actually had young marines state that they were gay just to get out of the marines being it was an easy way out of their enlistment contract. Our Battalion Commander would agree to letting them get out if the marine would come to his office with his partner and open mouth kiss each other. No takers. We needed trigger pullers and you were not getting out that easy.

    I know there are many highly qualified officers and enlisted people in very technical fields that the military should retain but are gay. But the military’s job is to kill people and destroy things, pure and simple. In an infrantry unit, being openly gay would cause unit cohesion problems. Our society has not matured enough to accept gays in infrantry units. Is that wrong, yes. But it is the reality.

    Just my thoughts from a different perspective than Choi’s. I’d like to see responses from Lt. Choi’s men in the New York Guard that serve under him which would support him, just not him saying they support him.

    • http://blog.mattalgren.com Matt Algren

      Thanks for your reply. I started to reply to some of your thoughts, but my comments got broader and longer, so I gave it its own space.

  • AzPatriot

    As a Marine, I have mixed feelings about DADT. I was always in an infranty combat unit that did not allow women to serve in our units. We had mostly guys from Texas, New York, and the heartland of the US. To these guys, tolerence to homosexuality was out of the question. I’ve friends that got out and later told me they were gay but would never anounce that they were gay while in service because of the marine environment.

    I started my Marine career before the DADT polciy by Clinton. After the policy, we actually had young marines state that they were gay just to get out of the marines being it was an easy way out of their enlistment contract. Our Battalion Commander would agree to letting them get out if the marine would come to his office with his partner and open mouth kiss each other. No takers. We needed trigger pullers and you were not getting out that easy.

    I know there are many highly qualified officers and enlisted people in very technical fields that the military should retain but are gay. But the military’s job is to kill people and destroy things, pure and simple. In an infrantry unit, being openly gay would cause unit cohesion problems. Our society has not matured enough to accept gays in infrantry units. Is that wrong, yes. But it is the reality.

    Just my thoughts from a different perspective than Choi’s. I’d like to see responses from Lt. Choi’s men in the New York Guard that serve under him which would support him, just not him saying they support him.

    • http://blog.mattalgren.com Matt Algren

      Thanks for your reply. I started to reply to some of your thoughts, but my comments got broader and longer, so I gave it its own space.