TRENDING: THIS WEEK’S BIG 5

A SALUTE TO PRIDE: For those still unconvinced that America’s social mores are changing, be aware that the U.S. Department of Defense announced it will hold an event to honor gay men and women who are serving in the military.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the Pentagon is ready to salute gay troops as part of Gay Pride Month, according to a report in the Associated Press.

Although the move is encouraging, especially to those who fought so hard to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” (which was struck down nine months ago), there are still challenges ahead. So far, the military does not afford health benefits to spouses or partners of gay service members. "The department is carefully and deliberately reviewing the benefits from a policy, fiscal, legal, and feasibility perspective," Eileen Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Thursday. One step at a time.

RECONSIDERING DEPORTATION:  The White House made the stunning announcement that many young illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as small children will be allowed to stay here. After the failure of Congress to pass the dream act, proposed legislation that would have allowed young immigrants to pursue citizenship, many were due for deportation. The Washington Post reports the criteria: They also must be 30 or younger and must have never been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.

EDWARDS WALKS:  Just after turning 59 years old and just before his baby momma Rielle Hunter releases her tell-all memoir, John Edwards became a free man last week. The Department of Justice announced it will not retry Edwards on shady dealings with 2008 presidential campaign funds. The Edwards debacle ended in a mistrial last month, and this latest announcement is the last piece in a story that has been front page news for four years. While the conventional wisdom is simply that he got away with it, the judicial system has spoken. Up next? Edwards says he would like to go back in to practicing law with a focus on the underprivileged.  We wonder, however, if perhaps he will have to deal with that “life-threatening”illness" that caused his trial to be delayed earlier this year.

PONZI PUNISHMENT:  His name never quite became as widely known as Bernie Madoff, but Allen Stanford’s $7 billion Ponzi scheme ran a close second to Madoff’s $18 billion caper. Stanford’s story will make for a great movie someday, complete with his high-flying lifestyle, financed to the tune of $2 billion with the investment money of his clients. Those clients were under the impression that their money was safely and wisely invested in profit-making financial instruments. The inevitable movie will likely also show how Stanford became a national hero on the island of Antigua, where much of his financial operation was headquartered, how he was almost killed in a prison fight, and how to the end he declared he was “not a Ponzi schemer, but just a successful businessman." His protestations nothwithstanding, the New York Times reports this week Stanford, 62, was sentenced in Federal District Court to 110 years in prison. By the way…our choice to play Stanford in the movie? John Lithgow.

OLD MEDIA….MEET NEW MEDIA:  The New York Times announced it will partner with Buzzfeed for Democratic and Republican convention coverage.  Why does this matter? Because it clearly shows that old line journalism acknowledges there is a significant place for new media when it comes to the biggest stories.  Buzzfeed, an online entity known primarily for pop culture coverage, is nonetheless far more advanced in streaming media than the New York Times. Buzzfeed also “gets” social media, which is an area the Times is still learning. They can learn from each other, and hats off to the Times for reaching out to such a new player in the media industries. It shows the Times is willing to step up to the ever-increasing demands of an Internet-savvy consumer base.

DIDN'T ASK...DIDN'T TELL...NOW WHAT?

Morning talk radio can be such white noise most of the time. But one recent morning as I drove to work, my ears perked up while I listened to an interview with Elaine Donnelly, founder and President of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR). CMR presents itself as an “organization formed to take a leadership role in promoting sound military personnel policies in the armed forces.” Sounds very patriotic and progressive, right? It’s not. CMR exists primarily for one purpose – to keep gay Americans out of the armed forces. The day I heard Donnelly pontificating on the radio was the first day that the old Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy no longer existed. Gay Americans could openly and proudly serve their country. Donnelly wasn’t having it.

When asked if she saw possibilities for positive contributions from gay service members, Donnelly (below, left) said she could not think of any. When asked what her main objection to gays in the military was, (other than the fact that they were gay), she said all it accomplishes is adding stress to all of the other military personnel. Donnelly calls the new military structure, post DADT, a “San Francisco military,” and “the president owns it from this day forward.” About the new laws supporting gays in the military, Donnelly says, “This is a political payoff on the part of the president to LGBT activist groups.” Donnelly’s take on the new military world? “There is nothing beneficial for the military here.”

Donnelly, who in the recent past has also suggested that gay men and women should not be allowed to teach in public schools, peppers her statements with terms like “gay agenda,” and “gay separatists.” To his credit, the interviewer speaking with Donnelly this week asked her repeatedly how military readiness would be affected by the inclusion of openly gay service members in the U.S. military. To Donnelly’s discredit, she never answered the question. Donnelly’s limited thinking is not confined to gays in the military. She has also suggested that the horrors of Abu Ghraib had much to do with allowing women in the military. Donnelly, whether she knows it or not, has fashioned herself into the 21st century Anita Bryant.

How odd that Donnelly, a woman of reasonable intelligence, does not realize that extremists with exclusionary causes like hers, do nothing more than galvanize the majority of fair, forward-thinking Americans to defeat discrimination. One has to wonder how Donnelly can establish an organization called “Center for Military Readiness” and not truly address the real issues threatening military readiness:

• In March, Congressman John Olver (D-MASS) expressed his own military readiness concerns. He pointed out that in 2010, in Afghanistan “one-third of deaths and casualties could have been avoided if proper body armor and vehicle armor had been provided from the start of the war.” Troops are still in danger and the current armor solutions are not adequately protecting them, Olver said. (Note to Elaine: Perhaps CMR needs to focus some of its attention and funding on properly outfitting our service members in war zones – including those who are gay).

• Sexual assault runs rampant in the U.S. military, overseas, according to the Pentagon’s own statistics. The numbers show there were more than 3,000 women sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2009, up 11 percent from the year before; among women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number rose 25%. When you look at the entire universe of female veterans, close to a third say they were victims of rape or assault while they were serving — twice the rate in the civilian population.” (Note to Elaine: These are heterosexual assaults mostly by male military personnel against female military personnel. Perhaps the CMR needs to work toward protecting victims of these assaults and look into the reasons the Code of Military Justice is not being routinely enforced). In its March 10, 2010 issue, TIME Magazine reports anecdotally, that many women overseas stop drinking water after 7PM, so they will not have to go to the bathroom after dark and run the risk of being raped.

• A 2010 U.S. Army report reveals 160 suicides by active-duty soldiers in 2009 and an additional 146 deaths resulted from risky behavior such as drug or prescription medication abuse. Seventy-four of those deaths were overdoses. There were 1,713 attempted suicides last year. Even more recent numbers: In July of this year, the U.S. Army reported a record 32 suspected suicides, the highest number in one month since the Army started keeping suicide records two years ago. (Note to Elaine: What are the deficiencies in the U.S. military that would create a higher suicide rate among military personnel than in the general population? Don’t depression, drug abuse, medication abuse and alcohol abuse threaten our military readiness? CMR might want to focus some efforts here).

• At Fort Hood, TX, the nation’s largest military post, in 2010 one in four service members sought mental health counseling for combat stress, substance abuse, broken marriages or other emotional problems, according to Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter Chiarelli. If we’re really going to concentrate on military readiness, shouldn’t our efforts be put here, rather than on who’s sexually attracted to whom? Elaine? Are you listening?

• By now, it is common knowledge that the U.S. Army has employed questionable, if not downright unauthorized tactics in recruiting new service members. Improprieties include recruiting high school students under the age of 17, promising potential recruits job training that does not exist, promising educational benefits that far exceed what the military covers, recruiting in commercial areas or high school campuses where recruitment is not allowed and more. Elaine, I’m wondering: If the military is recruiting individuals who are not qualified to serve, and if recruiters’ superiors are turning a blind eye to fraudulent recruiting techniques, wouldn’t that somehow knock our military readiness down a notch or two? I’m just sayin.’

Military readiness is not about sex or sexuality. Let’s call this what it is – a non-issue. Gay service members have quietly been sharing quarters with straight service members forever. Everyone has co-existed relatively peacefully. Military readiness has more to do with how recruiters are persuading people to sign up, how military personnel are being treated once they’re in, what types of protection (or lack of such) is being afforded combat personnel, and how the military justice system is or is not dealing with clear violations of military law. Fringe group extremists like Donnelly accomplish nothing more than taking the necessary focus off of real issues that affect national security. Elaine, we’ve heard your rhetoric over and over again. It is meaningless, and to most of us it sounds like the rantings of a bitter person who has a personal anti-gay agenda. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is history and your attempts to spread paranoia were ineffective. If you truly want to serve your country as a private citizen, start using your resources and your energy to strengthen the existing military and to improve its reputation among other world powers (especially the 25 countries that already allow gays to serve openly in their military) who have come to view the current “gays in the military” debate as nothing more than tired, old American provincialism. Elaine, we Americans are bigger and better than that. If you are not, then you need to step out of the public spotlight, permanently.

IT IS TIME TO ASK...AND TELL

When Bill Clinton was campaigning for his first term as President, the issue of gays in the military started to gather some steam. Around 1993, I heard a report about a pending “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that would permit gays to serve in the military. Make no mistake…gays had always served in the U.S. military, but no one really spoke of it. In World War II there may have been hundreds of thousands of gay service personnel. If a more aggressive effort was not undertaken to rid the military of known homosexuals, it was only because there was such a massive need for troops and support personnel. In a war like that one, the U.S. could not be quite so picky about sexual orientation. Still, military people who were discovered to be sexually active with people of the same gender often found themselves in psychiatric wards.

We don’t presume to ship gay people off to mental hospitals anymore. That hasn’t been done in decades. But somehow, even now, in 2009, our government still fails to recognize the remarkable achievements of some individuals, once it is determined that they are homosexual. In fact, for thousands of U.S. military personnel, their sexuality has rendered their heroism, their bravery and their commitment to America null and void.

Such is the case of Lieutenant Colonel Victor J. Fehrenbach, a fighter weapons systems officer, an aviator with 18 years of service. Fehrenbach, whose mother and father served in the U.S. Air Force, and who estimates the military has spent upwards of $25 million training him, will shortly be involuntarily discharged because he is gay. How interesting that the U.S. military earlier saw fit to ceremoniously decorate him for heroism, and yet now sees fit to fire him. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is in full bloom, and currently no one – not the President, not the Congress, not military officials—no one is speaking of it.

That is, until Lt. Col. Fehrenbach decided to speak. He did so on Rachel Maddow’s program. Listen to what he had to say:

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Think about it: What is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” anyway? It is a policy that simply says, ‘We, the U.S. government agree not to discuss your sex life with you because we need you in large numbers to fight for your country; and you, the service personnel that we need, agree not to discuss your sex life with us, because you have something to be fully ashamed of. And if you slip up and express yourself honestly and act on your attraction to another human being, we’ll have no choice but to fire you.’

The premise is flawed. Of course, our government has a choice. Their option is to cancel the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and work toward social change in the military. Congress has the power to do this. You have the personal power to communicate your opinion to your Senators and Representatives. Here is the place you can find their email addresses. Speak up. In the end, it is about you. Socio/cultural change is always about all of us.