You may have seen this article on Yahoo.

FROM:

• radical joe

TO:

• Justin OShea

Message flagged

Friday, November 18, 2011 10:49 PM

 

Justin,

Don't know if you have seen this, just scares the crap out of anyone that
is a republican.............

Joe Galant

..SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Army Capt. Stephen Hill says he wasn't trying
to score political points when he asked the Republican presidential
candidates if they would reinstate the ban on gays serving openly in
the U.S. military.

He wasn't worried that his debate question, posed via a YouTube video
recorded in Iraq, would generate boos or reveal his sexual orientation
to millions of people, including his superiors and fellow troops.

All Hill was thinking about in September was his husband of
four-and-a-half months, Joshua Snyder, in Columbus, Ohio.

Now that "don't ask, don't tell" has been lifted, he needed to know if
the military would take the next step and recognize his marriage, or
if a new president would try to force soldiers like him back into the
closet.

"I was looking forward to the future and hoping everybody would
realize we are soldiers first, always," said Hill, 41, an Army
reservist who returned last week from his yearlong deployment. "I was
hoping 'don't ask, don't tell' would be a distant memory for
everybody."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Hill reflected publicly for
the first time on his reasons for submitting the pre-recorded question
for the Sept. 22 debate, as well as his reaction to the heckles heard
around the world; the answer that former Sen. Rick Santorum gave to
thunderous applause; and the outrage expressed on his behalf by, among
others, his commander in chief.

With Snyder on the telephone, Hill watched the debate live from Iraq
at 4 a.m. And this is what he asked: "In 2010, when I was deployed to
Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I'm a gay soldier and I
didn't want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your
presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that's been
made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?"

Santorum replied that he would reinstitute the ban on open service by
gay troops because "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no
place in the military."

"What we are doing is playing social experimentation with our military
right now. That's tragic," he continued. "Leave it alone. Keep it to
yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual."

Hill says the fact that he just outed himself on national television
had barely registered when he absorbed the boos and Santorum's answer
followed by applause.

"When the actual booing occurred, my gut dropped out, because my first
inclination was, did I just do something wrong?" he said. "The answer,
obviously, wasn't very supportive of gay people, and there was a lot
of fear of how the Army would take the question."

He did not have to wait long to find out. At breakfast later that
morning, the segment was playing on the chow hall television. Hill
immediately tracked down his commander, who told him she had no
problem with what he'd done but that she would need to run it up the
chain of command. She later relayed the response.

"She said, 'What the military's most concerned with is that you are
OK, because it's a lot of pressure on you and we want to make sure if
there is anything we can do to help,'" he recalled.

President Barack Obama, about a week later, chided the Republican
contenders for staying silent when several people booed an American
soldier. Santorum said he had not heard the booing but condemned the
audience members who did it.

What Hill remembers most was that a presidential candidate defined his
marriage and military service in terms of sex. He holds that up
against the times he hid Snyder's photograph because Army buddies were
coming over to play video games, introduced his husband as his
roommate or brother, and the legal vows they exchanged at the grave of
Air Force Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, who was discharged in 1975 after
becoming the first gay service member to challenge the U.S. military's
ban on gay troops.

Snyder and Hill last month joined other same-sex military couples in
suing the government for the same benefits as straight military
couples, which the Pentagon denies them on grounds that federal law
defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"This is not about sex," Hill said. "A special privilege is not hiding
pictures in my house or God forbid, taking mortar fire again and not
knowing if Josh will be recognized. I'm fighting every day to protect
everyone's rights as human beings, and it seems counterintuitive for
me to be fighting for those rights and not have them.

JOE. . .thanks for sending this article!

Reading this makes me cringe. . . It still

isn't safe.  Santorum is such a dork!  Imagine,

saying he didn't hear the boooos. . .duuh ! Never should have happened and how did he not hear?  Hello. . . . .

"it" still isn't safe "out there", is it.  We'd like to think so but

we do that at our own risks.

Still a lot of work to do!  These soldiers are brave!

 

justin