Over the next few days, just about every Dutch official justifiably raised hell over Gen. Sheehan’s charge. And now, General Sheehan is apologizing. At least he says he is.
Here’s the letter he sent to Dutch General Henk van der Breeman (ret.), who Sheehan gave as the source for his allegations.
Using the word 'sorry' doesn't make it an apology.
So to make this perfectly clear, when Gen. Sheehan said that the allowing gays to serve in the Dutch military caused the largest massacre in Europe since World War II, what he really meant was that allowing gays to serve in the Dutch military caused all the good soldiers to quit the military, which caused the largest massacre in Europe since World War II.
See the difference? No?
Gen. Sheehan is still blaming gays for genocide. His only apology is for not making it clearer that he also thinks the Dutch government is to blame. His message to Congress is that if they let gays serve openly, any soldier being killed in combat in the future will be their fault, because clearly you can trace the death back to the repeal of DADT. And you know what we do when someone kills a US soldier…
Come to think of it, Gen. Sheehan’s comments are more of a threat than a message, don’t you think?
For about a year, I have tried to find a way to bring up the health care debate on this blog, and for about a year, I’ve failed. But today it all fell into place in the most frightening way possible.
Just in the last week before the health care bill passed, the tenor of the debate got even worse than it had been–and it had been pretty bad. The joshua blog has an excellent rundown of the early problems, and I urge you to head over there to find out the dirty details. For my purposes, though, I’ll just give you a list of problems over the last week:
The following words have been hurled at House Representatives:
Rep. Weiner’s Schlomo note was signed with a swastika. There was also a reference to gay sex.
Rep. Cleaver was spat upon.
The crowd thought it was hilarious when a protester taunted Rep. Frank with a fey, lisping affect. Because he’s a homosexual, you know.
Majority Whip Jim Clyburn was faxed a drawing of a hangman’s noose.
Rep. Bart Stupak has gotten angry voicemails wishing violence and at least one fax that includes the implied death threat of a hangman’s noose with his name on it.
Bricks and rocks were thrown through windows of at least five local congressional or party offices:
Louise Slaughter’s Niagra Falls, NY office
Gabrielle Giffords’ Tuscon, AZ office
The Monroe County, NY Democratic Committee office (Slaughter’s district)
The Sedgwick County, KS Democratic Party headquarters
The Hamilton County, OH Democratic Party headquarters
House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a National Review interview that Rep. Steve Driehaus would be “a dead man” if he voted for the health reform bill. Then a protest group published a picture of Rep. Driehaus with his children in the Cincinnati Enquirer, and another group posted his address online, telling people to go to his house this Sunday.
And then there’s the honest-to-goodness attempted assassination. On Tuesday two teabagger sites posted what they thought to be Rep. Tom Perriello‘s address with an invitation to “drop by”. The address was actually the congressman’s brother’s house (Teabagger’s response: “Oh well, collateral damage.”), and this afternoon he found that someone had sliced the propane line leading into his house. The FBI is investigating the crime as a threat to a member of congress.
EDIT: It turns out that while I was typing away, Rachel Maddow was hitting a lot of the same points on her program. Great minds and all that, you know. Watch it here.
The history books are clear: Violence from the opposition always accompanies major social change. Always. And as Rachel Maddow pointed out on Monday, this is the first major social change that Congress has passed in a very long time. In fact, it’s the first in my lifetime.
The next Big Social Change the country will debate is LGBT rights. ENDA and DADT are headed for major action soon, and you can bet that if they don’t move forward, protests like Get Equal and Lt. Dan Choi staged last Thursday will be swift. If the Supreme Court decides with the Prop 8 trial that civil rights do not extend to LGBT people, the outcry will be thunderous. And now we know firsthand the violent reaction we can expect if it comes to that.
So let me be the one to ask: Are you ready?
Are you ready to stand up for what you believe in, even when violence is aimed at you? Are you ready to step up so we don’t have another generation of soldiers discharged from the military, civilians fired from their jobs, couples separated by outmoded immigration law, and children forced to choose between education and safety?
I mentioned Rep. John Lewis earlier; he was arrested over 40 times in the 1960s for his civil rights activism. It wasn’t popular then. He didn’t get a gushing editorial in the newspaper during the Freedom Rides. He didn’t get a hero’s welcome in his hometown after an Alabama highway patrolman stomped his head bloody at a march from Selma to Montgomery. But he came back two days later and he did it again, and then again after that.
This is not a theoretical question anymore: Are you ready to take that step?
In January, we were shocked by video of Ex-Gay Industry Leader Scott Lively telling a Ugandan audience that gays were to blame for the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. You might remember that Lively has also published a book claiming that gays were behind the Jewish Holocaust. It was pretty outrageous, but at least he was alone in baselessly blaming a minority group for genocide.
Well, no more. Last Thursday, Mr. Lively got some company.
Rachel Maddow was on top of the story on her show that night.
Senator Carl Levin wasted no time challenging Gen. Sheehan’s lies, but the damage was already done. Dutch officials, including Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, immediately expressed stunned outrage at Gen. Sheehan’s claims.
Friday night, Maddow gave an update on the fallout.
Once they were done at the White House, Get Equal moved to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s offices on Capitol Hill and in San Fransisco. There they refused to leave until Speaker Pelosi committed to a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which has been languishing in Congress for…well, years.
No identities yet; will update when I get them
After several tense hours, four protesters at Pelosi’s office on the Hill were arrested and taken, coincidentally, to the same facility that Choi and Pietrangelo are being held in. Just before midnight, the ENDA 4 were released without bail.
Incidentally, Choi and Pietrangelo are being held without bail or contact to the outside world until they appear in court tomorrow.
Wow. Dan Choi (thankfully) hijacked this afternoon’s Human Rights Campaign/Kathy Griffin (don’t even get me started) rally to bring the attention back where it belongs: Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
How did he do it? He chained himself to the White House fence in his first major act of civil disobedience.
Lt. Choi and Cpt. Pietrangelo (pic via @piconico)
In a futile attempt to manage headlines, police did not immediately arrest Lt. Choi or Capt. James Pietrangelo, whose Supreme Court appeal was denied last year after the Obama administration asked the Court not to take the case.
Instead, within ten minutes of the protest’s start, police arrested Robin McGehee, one of the organizers for last October’s Equality March and head of new group Get Equal, for “disorderly conduct” reportedly because she organized the protest.
Also, she wasn’t wearing a uniform. Arresting a servicemember in front of the White House would make for scandalous front page pictures.
Get Equal's Robin McGehee arrested (pic via @MichaelsThought)
But their effort didn’t get Lt. Choi or Cpt. Pietrangelo off the fence, so police finally handcuffed them half an hour later and placed them in a much less conspicuous police van. Still waiting for those pictures. This photo was taken as police began to remove them from the fence.
Lt. Choi and Cpt. Pietrangelo arrested (via Kerry Eleveld of Advocate.com)
Hallelujah, praise the Lord, and thank you Lt. Choi and Cpt. Pietrangelo for actual doing something.
This is what’s coming, gays. Time to stop begging for crumbs from the table. Time to stop accepting the calls to “be patient.” We are coming into the civil disobedience stage. Are you willing to be arrested for your freedom? Join Get Equal if you’re ready to put up. And by the way, rule number one: you don’t disperse because the police told you to. That’s what happened in the crowd today, and it needs to not happen again.
UPDATE 03/18/2010: Here’s video of CNN’s Rick Sanchez coverage this afternoon.
UPDATE 03/19/10: Lt. Choi and Cpt. Pietrangelo were arraigned Friday afternoon after being held overnight without bail or access to a telephone. They were brought into the courtroom in handcuffs and leg irons. Both pleaded not guilty and opted for a jury trial over a $100 fine. Both were released and will stand trial on April 26, 2010.
P.S. Kathy Griffin, who said on HRC’s stage that she would come with Choi to the White House, never showed up. Her only tweet in reference about the White House protest bears that out. Predictably, once they turned her cameras off she didn’t really care all that much. HRC also decided not to show up.
Let this be a message to LGBTs everywhere: Don’t accept them as allies just because they say they’re allies. The time for easy allies who don’t want to get their hands dirty is over.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
