I was driving down the road the other day and a song came on the radio…..Carrie Underwood's new one, Just a Dream. If you haven't heard it, it's the one about the eighteen year old girl who loses her fiancé, a soldier, before they can make it to the altar. Presumably, he is killed in action, and she goes to the funeral in her wedding gown because they were supposed to have forever and now she can't believe he is gone. The song touched me, I'll admit, and I felt myself becoming a little bit teary eyed thinking about a poor young girl being handed a folded flag and listening to the guns ring out a final salute to her fallen love. But I couldn't help taking the visions that permeated my brain one step further. As I was listening to the song I was thinking that at least she has this final tribute to give her some sense of closure; and, while it doesn't take away her pain, it at least validates it.
When a young couple, a boy and girl just starting out on a life together, are torn apart by the horror that is this war that we seem to be perpetually stuck in, there is a universal sense of tragedy. Almost everyone can agree that this is a loss that must be acknowledged by murmurs of sympathy and a shared pain that transcends even the barriers of place, ethnicity, social status and even religion. But what happens when the couple is of the same sex? The military maintains a policy of “Don't ask, Don't tell” but what about when the time comes and someone must be told? When the next of kin notification for Suzy Smith is her partner Sarah, or when Joe Jonson's future husband Tom is left crying over his fiancé's grave, “don't ask, don't tell” also leads to don't cry. Gay soldiers “don't exist” so there are no gay partners left behind. Silence is the price that must be paid for the privilege of dying for your country, and the loved ones who are left behind must grieve in that same silence or else the honor of death is tarnished. There is no folded flag, no closure, no validation, no existence in the eyes of the country for which the fallen served and died.
To be sure, many gay and lesbian soldiers have been “outed” by their families and friends after their deaths. For some survivors, this is the only means left for them to rage at the injustice of the system that willingly accepted a life freely given, yet denied that individual the chance to be honest about his or her identity in the process. Unfortunately, when families choose to express the truth, the public does not always welcome it, or them, with open arms. “Soldiers Die, God Laughs” says the Reverend Fred Phelps and his congregation from the Westboro Baptist Church as they descend upon the funerals of these fallen soldiers, bringing with them their manifesto of hatred against homosexuality and other “sins” blaming the deaths of all American soldiers on the simple fact that the United States military allows “faggots” to serve. The simple fact of the matter is that these individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, have willingly given up their lives to serve a country that they believe in even as it fails to acknowledge their very existence. It seems that, in consideration of the sacrifices some are willing to save so that all can live in relative security, acceptance should be simple and without reservation.
As long as we, as a country, persist in our involvement in this war, soldiers will die and loved ones will be left behind. It isn't just a dream, or even a nightmare from which we can hope to awaken. It is a fact, a reality, and we should be allowed to ask, we should be allowed to tell, and we should be given the freedom to cry.
