A Slippery Slope, Indeed

My partner and I recently screened the film, “Good Night, and Good Luck” at the local multiplex. While thousands lined up for the latest Harry Potter flick, we wanted to get a taste of something a little different. Besides, we had already seen “Goblet of Fire.” It was a simple film that told the story of Edward R. Murrow’s frontal assault on Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his “House Un-American Activities Committee.”

I read one review of this film which quoted a particular critic that thought that the portrayal of McCarthy was a “little over the top.” It was later explained to that critic that director George Clooney used archive footage of McCarthy instead of hiring an actor to portray the then-junior senator from Wisconsin. Over the top, indeed.

When the closing credits rolled, I knew that “Good Night, and Good Luck” was a piece of American history that should never fade from American memory. I told Curtis that I thought it was very timely and relevant even today. I had no idea how relevant it was.

On December 20, the Servicemember’s Legal Defense Network posted a bone-chilling article that detailed alleged accounts of the Pentagon’s spying on gay and gay-rights groups across the country. They were supposedly a “credible threat” for terrorism. The story first broke on NBC. What was their great crime? They wanted to protest the failed ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ policy at recruiter offices. Similar groups in San Diego, New York, New Orleans, and Atlanta were stung with the “credible threat” label as well.

We Americans should be outraged. The very notion that a gay rights organization would be called a “credible threat” of terrorism is not only homophobic, but defies everything that the Constitution stands for. Or are our religious zealot neighbors trying to change that part of the constitution (the right to assemble) too?

Normally, I like to keep my writing somewhat light for the entertainment of my readers with a thought thrown in the mix as a nugget. But this is an area in which humor eludes me. Special Counsel Joseph Welsh said it best. “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

When will someone stand up to this juggernaut of homophobia and bigotry in our military and say enough is enough? Over a million people have been kicked out in the last century simply for being gay. Yet, when a war is going on, we all of the sudden need all the bodies we can get, gay or not.

The time has come to write our congressmen and our senators and demand that they put an end to this anti-gay witch hunt in our own country against our own citizens. We should point out that protests from gay rights events might be offensive (kiss-ins of all things), but they are always peaceful and legal. It’s time for the Pentagon to get their collected heads out of their brass and stop this outright illegal onslaught against our own people in the name of “terrorism.”

Have you no sense of decency, Mr. Bush? What about you, Mr. Rumsfeld? It has become increasingly clear, in what is clearly tragic irony, that our country has been hijacked by religious fanatics in the name of protecting against religious fanatics who want to hijack airplanes.

Some would talk about the “slippery slope” that they believed gay marriage would bring. How about this one: concentration camps, imprisonment without regard to human rights, breaking down doors to arrest people for having sex in their own home. That would be a slippery slope to fear.

No, wait. That’s already happening, isn’t it? Start those letter-writing campaigns, my friends. The only way we can get out of this fiery spiral deeper into a revival of McCarthyism (at best) and concentration camps is to be out, open, honest, and say, “thus far, and no more.”

We can turn the tide, my friends. Murrow did it just by telling the truth. Will anyone fill the gap of agonizing silence that is screaming across the airwaves? Only time will tell.

- David W. Shelton

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