For this week, I'd like to focus again on silenced queer voices, this time vis-à-vis the military service. But before I talk about "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) and queer criticisms, let's briefly look at queer activism's history.
According to Liz Highleyman's article in The Gay & Lesbian Review, "GLBT people have also played a vital role in peace and antiwar activism, speaking out against military conflicts from World War I to the current war in Iraq." For a specific example, let's look to 1969, a particularly important moment in queer history (think Stonewall). Queer activists, divorcing themselves from the conservative, assimilationist goals of the homophile movement of the '50s and '60s, formed the Gay Liberation Front, taking the name from the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. The group advocated revolutionary change through the elimination of social institutions and aspects of American culture, such as marriage and militarism.
More recently, however, the media spectacle of DADT and its repeal has not offered critical queer perspectives on getting rid of the aforementioned policy, much in the same way that queer critiques of same-sex marriage do not see the light of day. This column will, therefore, highlight the ignored voices of dissent.
Around two decades before the hullabaloo about DADT, comedian Bill Hicks, who died in 1994, during one of his acts scathingly criticized the assimilation of lesbians and gays into the military and called out the hypocritical nature of moralistic rhetoric that supports imperialist American militarism. Last February, an advertisement made by guerilla artists was placed in a bus shelter in the Castro district of San Francisco featuring two slogans: "Do Ask! Don't Kill!" and "Assimilation ? Liberation." One of the speech bubbles next to the mouth of the pictured man reads: "I wish our queer organizations worked to end war instead of for my right to be out while I kill or am killed in one."
In the same month, Philadelphia poet and anti-war queer activist CAConrad posted an online petition directed at LGBT community leaders and media, pointing out that having gays and lesbians serve in the military is not an issue of civil rights and that progressive media outlets should clearly outline their stance toward the military and war; they cannot both decry war and root for DADT's repeal. In November, the drag queen Lady Bunny wrote an article for The Huffington Post expressing anti-war sentiments while emphasizing the horrors of the Iraq war.
Then, last month, the nonprofit group Queers for Economic Justice wrote a statement in response to the repeal of DADT stating that "military service is not economic justice, and it is immoral that the military is the nation's de facto jobs program for poor and working-class people." One of the concerns lies in framing war as a form of patriotic labor in order to recruit disadvantaged urban and rural youth and disenfranchised youth of color, who then become agents of death and destruction for having enlisted for the promise of a better future. (Veterans live like kings, or so I hear.)
Why should we celebrate that homosexuals can now serve openly in the military, an institution fraught with intolerance, discriminatory practices and the perpetuation of imperialism? Queer people have served in the military before, and now we should be glad that we can continue the bloodshed without being afraid of official backlash? Not to mention that the focus on DADT has detracted from much needed attention on other issues, such as securing affordable housing and access to healthcare for the queer community.
Queer activism cannot merely rely on an uncritical reasoning that simply equates assimilation to equality.