Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

http://www.rockymountainbullhorn.com/main.php?module=article-detail&articleId=323

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
The military wants you to “be all that you can be”—unless you happen to be gay.

November 10, 2005

It was in early January 2003, the middle of winter in Texas, when a few seconds in a nightclub changed Stacey Vasquez’s life forever. Despite a slight chill in the air outside, it was hot on the dance floor of the Dallas club—libations flowed easily, and so did laughter. As is universally the case in bars on Saturday nights, the inhibitions that normally govern people’s lives dropped like flimsy veils, and in a mad moment of freedom, Vasquez planted a kiss on a friend who happened to be a woman.

The wife of one of Vasquez’s co-workers witnessed the kiss. And while such an incident would normally trigger little more than a raised eyebrow and water-cooler gossip at work on Monday, for Army Sgt. 1st Class Stacey Vasquez, that smooch spelled the end of a twelve-year career.

The co-worker’s wife reported what she had seen to Vasquez’s commanding officer. When her C.O. asked her to tell her side of the story, Vasquez decided she couldn’t lie about who she was anymore, landing her on the wrong side of the military’s congressionally mandated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

“I was removed from my station the day after I wrote my statement ,” Vasquez says. “They took my computer, my government vehicle, and my credit card, and I was told I would report to my commander’s office.”

While Vasquez was being investigated over the next eight months, prior to her eventual discharge, her duties changed, to say the least. Though she’d earned more than a dozen medals and commendations, Vasquez was reduced to the status of a bad child on a time-out.

“In that office, there was the recruiting commander, the first sergeant and a secretary, and there’s no extra office space,” she says. “So for eight months I sat in a chair while my first sergeant told me how worthless I was every day.”

backhanded way to take that shit and smack the fuckers right in the face with it.

Let's ponder how to bust this fucker down...

I know DU. There are some brilliant people here and some sneaky ones too. I know y'all can come up with a way to fuck with this stoopid shit.