In posting this announcement, I called it a small step, and it is, a very small one or should be, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. Like most here, I'm not going to join the military (though I might have, if I thought they'd have a ++ year old with a bad heart, I'm a USAian and could really use better health care and soon.), like a smaller most, I've never been in the military either and have never had to hide from that particular kind of inquisition, but that isn't the point.

And I'll say that it's more than a bit depressing (to me) to hear people say things like: "So what, they ain't me. I'm T, not G, not Q, not L." Because that isn't the point either. And adding in the,'they sold us short back then' sauce, really, really isn't the point.

See, I am old enough to remember seeing two water fountains in train stations. I'm just old enough to remember when I learned that was unfair, but I'm not black, (and at my local Walgreen's they really did look just the same, I remember them well and the damn sign and not fondly, but I knew when I was about seven why it was unfair.)

My father and mother played canasta with a Jewish man and woman every week. He could have course privileges at the local golf club, but could not be a member. I knew as a child why that was unjust.

And I knew, without being told, by the time I was twelve, that it wasn't his poverty that would have kept my grandfather out of the club, (I knew that because I had been to the big town (not their own town, where almost everyone shared an ethnicity) with my grandparents, and knew there where some stores where they did not yet feel welcome.) But I am really only half that ethnicity, and the other half of me is divide into eighths (and none are ones that anyone cares about now unless they are looking for good kolaches, wiener schnitzel or crawdads) and I left the religion that united those groups long, long ago. Should I still care about all that? Because for a while I did think, ~Hey, the world has gotten better and it isn't me those sign are meant for these days,~ but it didn't feel better; it felt unjust and unfair and mean.

Then I got older, and a found out about other groups that were exclude, condemned, hated for what they were. And it wasn't like the drinking fountains. There were no signs telling them to keep out. It was worse. There were FBI files (and M1 files and Interpol files too) and there were whispers and snickers and innuendo and convictions and imprisonments and chemical treatment of great and marvelous genius who had already given much to the whole world. And I was still young when I discovered I was a member of that - those groups too, and I was still young when I learned that even those that were fighting hard and sometimes at great risk for the freedom, because damnit Selma was about freedom, of blacks. Those that thought the 'ancient' "Keep out Pollock/Mick/Bohunk" signs were funny, or that the ones that said, "Crucify the Kikes" were evil, still thought that this group that I belonged to should hide, and cower, and suffer or, maybe, that they should just stay away.

I was almost young, but not quite, when it didn't change. When there was a riot in New York called Stonewall. I wasn't there, I was hiding and cowering and suffering in a dorm room in Texas. But people talked about it. Nothing changed. But people talked about it. I, We, all of us, all of us, all of us talked about it. It was even in the daily paper. It wasn't the first Queer riot, but we, and they, talked about it. And nothing changed, but everything did.

I know that the first gay bar in Austin didn't open the week after Stonewall, because I know it was already old when I found it the week after Stonewall, but it felt new to me. I was never, ever ashamed of being gay - I denied being gay, yeah, but that's not the same thing - It was the same as being Bohunk/Kraut/Cajun/Mick/Wop/Papist to me, just a lot less escapable or disguisable - for me.

But for years, and years, and years --- and years. It went on. And nothing changed. But we could go to clubs, our clubs, if that was what we wanted to do. I guess we could before, but now we could walk outside the front door. And we could have friends too. But we, even if we were out, didn't talk about those place or friends at work, or to landlords and neighbors. Even if we could hide what we were, we didn't ever talk of it to 'them' - because of rumors and innuendo and snickers and lies.

I know. This is a lot of misremembering here. A sociologist or cultural historian would find tons of fallacies in the way I'm telling this. But just because it isn't accurate, doesn't make it false, because I'm not the only one that remembers it this way. Look, Warhol wasn't the first homosexual artist, or film maker; Capote wasn't the first homosexual novelist, Holly Woodlawn probably wasn't the first transsexual to appear in a movie, but suddenly we all knew that was what they were as we walked up to the box offices! One of us, one of us. And before the convictions too. And that was different.

So as nothing ever changed, things changed. Some movies were made that had us in them, that were about us, really the real us, just a few but they existed. Really stupid, insulting (IMO) gay characters showed up as stars in sitcoms. But they existed. Some not so over the top minor characters followed.

But for most of us, gay,lesbian, transsexual, us, it didn't change. We still hid. Because, in spite of the stereotype, not all of us are artist or geniuses, alas and alac.

But it did change. We became mayors and congressmen and judges and cabinet level wonks. Openly- because, obviously we had always been all of those things (well, I don't know about the cabinet level wonks, I'm not sure the FBI is that bad, and they looked hard). In 1993 the FBI, and the military police and investigation units were still looking for gays everywhere. That is where DADT came from; it said quit hunting, and that wasn't a bad thing, (not good, but a real, real change). But it meant that gays still had to hide.

I DON'T WANT TO HIDE. I don't want you to hide.

Because if a black can't drink the water on the right, if a Jew can't have a hamburger after his golf round, if my grandmother can't charge things at the Rexall Pharmacy because her name ends in a k, if a dumb fag can't get his ass shot off, then it hurts me, and you and us and them too. And yes it matters. No, it isn't lynching and workcamps, but it is the same thing, because liberty is more then the freedom to be like you, or them, and it can't be measured in grams; it is all or nothing, and if they don't have it then I don't; if I don't, they don't.