Rob Smith

I’d never heard of Jason Collins when I saw a friend’s Facebook status earlier today announcing the news that he was gay. (I prefer college basketball over the NBA.) As I googled his name to find out more, one thought kept running through my mind: “Please be black.”

I wanted Jason Collins to be black, because I knew what it would mean to black gay youth in this country. I wanted him to be black because I’m hyper-aware that the list of influential LGBT celebrities like Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper and Neil Patrick Harris is very white. Most important, I wanted Jason Collins to be black because I know exactly what it’s like to be a gay teenager with dark brown skin who comes out but cannot find anyone gay who looks like you on television. Or in magazines. Or on the news. These days, when I lecture about LGBT issues on college campuses and various other events, people often tell me I’m the only black person they’ve ever seen speak out for gay rights. The pride I feel is mixed with uneasiness because I wish that weren’t the case.

At 18 years old, I was that young black gay boy struggling with his sexuality. I was treated with derision by the largely white clientele of the local gay bars in the mid-size Colorado city where I lived, and the only black gays I found on Internet searches were porn stars. In contrast, gay magazines and websites showed white men to be healthy, happy, functional and desired, but I could not find myself reflected back to me, and the experience created a feeling of isolation that took years to heal. Like every other gay man, I watched Showtime’s American version of “Queer as Folk” and looked to those handsome, upwardly mobile white guys to represent all that my bold new life was about. Only once during the show’s triumphant run did I ever see a black face. Of course, he was a well-endowed hookup for the show’s most promiscuous character.

Since then, images in the mainstream media have remained overwhelmingly white. Jodie Foster, Ellen DeGeneres, Kurt Hummel on “Glee,” the couple from “Modern Family.” Is it any wonder that there are still some segments of the black community that see being gay as a “white thing”? The mantle of black gay male is being carried by the hairstylists on “The Real Housewives” and the contestants on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

(continued at link...) - Salon.com

I’d never heard of Jason Collins when I saw a friend’s Facebook status earlier today announcing the news that he was gay. (I prefer college basketball over the NBA.) As I googled his name to find out more, one thought kept running through my mind: “Please be black.”

I wanted Jason Collins to be black, because I knew what it would mean to black gay youth in this country. I wanted him to be black because I’m hyper-aware that the list of influential LGBT celebrities like Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper and Neil Patrick Harris is very white. Most important, I wanted Jason Collins to be black because I know exactly what it’s like to be a gay teenager with dark brown skin who comes out but cannot find anyone gay who looks like you on television. Or in magazines. Or on the news. These days, when I lecture about LGBT issues on college campuses and various other events, people often tell me I’m the only black person they’ve ever seen speak out for gay rights. The pride I feel is mixed with uneasiness because I wish that weren’t the case.

At 18 years old, I was that young black gay boy struggling with his sexuality. I was treated with derision by the largely white clientele of the local gay bars in the mid-size Colorado city where I lived, and the only black gays I found on Internet searches were porn stars. In contrast, gay magazines and websites showed white men to be healthy, happy, functional and desired, but I could not find myself reflected back to me, and the experience created a feeling of isolation that took years to heal. Like every other gay man, I watched Showtime’s American version of “Queer as Folk” and looked to those handsome, upwardly mobile white guys to represent all that my bold new life was about. Only once during the show’s triumphant run did I ever see a black face. Of course, he was a well-endowed hookup for the show’s most promiscuous character.

Since then, images in the mainstream media have remained overwhelmingly white. Jodie Foster, Ellen DeGeneres, Kurt Hummel on “Glee,” the couple from “Modern Family.” Is it any wonder that there are still some segments of the black community that see being gay as a “white thing”? The mantle of black gay male is being carried by the hairstylists on “The Real Housewives” and the contestants on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

(continued at link...) - Salon.com

President Obama Bristles When He is the Target of Activist Tactics He Once Used - The Washington Post

In some ways, I suppose it could be considered a good thing that I wasn’t racially profiled until my sophomore year of college. For some young black men, it happens even sooner. My personal style has always leaned more towards Carlton Banks than 50 Cent, and I’ve never really been a fan of baggy jeans or fitted caps. That night however, I’d taken it upon myself to throw on a hooded sweatshirt as it started to rain. It was early evening and I found myself leaving class and walking in a parking lot behind an older white woman who was heading to her car after what was presumably a long day at work.

Lost in college-kid thoughts of midterms and summer internships, she barely registered to me until she immediately stopped in her tracks, as if I’d shouted her name. She then began to shriek in a near-hysterical tone, admonishing me for having the audacity to walk 10 feet behind her after dark. “Don’t ever do that! Ask your mother! Ask your sister! Don’t do that because it’s scary!” Initially, the episode registered as little more than bizarre to me, but as I finished my walk home, it became more apparent to me that the triple threat of my dark skin, stocky build and dark grey (fraternity!) hoodie was just too much for this woman to bear. Until that point, I’d never really thought of myself as an imposing or physically threatening guy, but to this poor lady I may as well have been the Unabomber.

Being profiled is a black male rite of passage that I was somehow inoculated from until that evening. Although I was vaguely aware of it before, I somehow made the mistake of thinking that my style of dress, “upward mobility,” or college education made me somehow exempt from the social cost of being a black male. It is not a mistake I’ve made since, nor is it one that the New York Police Department or cab drivers in this city will ever allow me to make again. Every black male from the mailroom to the boardroom and everywhere in between seems to have a story about being profiled in this way, and my experiences have been fairly innocuous compared to the horror stories I’ve heard.

None of these, however, is more horrific and shocking than that of the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin just a few weeks ago in Florida. The death, and the way the local police force handled it, is the greatest nightmare of every black American male who has, by virtue of growing older, made the transition from cute black boy to scary black man.

The latest on the Trayvon Martin case

When I leave my apartment to live my life as a black man, I do so with the full awareness that I could very easily be murdered on the street at anytime and few people would care, particularly if those involved were in law enforcement. I do so with the full awareness that in society’s eyes, my life is worth less than that of others. I’ve been on the receiving end of enough hard stares from police officers and have read enough stories about the Sean Bells and the Amadou Diallos of the world to know just how little my life is valued if I do happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve seen enough news cycles and investigative reports to know just which lives are valued the most in American society in 2012, and they are not of black men.

Trayvon Martin isn’t just the victim of a loose cannon and an inferior local police force, he’s the victim of a society that criminalizes black men based on little else than the color of their skin. He’s the victim of a society that sees his life as less valuable than that of a teen of virtually any other race. He’s the victim of a society struggling with reconciling an ugly racial history with the undeniable march of progress. He’s the victim of a society that can make big news about a video that purports to bring attention to black children being killed on another continent, but is all too silent when a black child is murdered right in our own backyard.

With his death, he has also become a symbol of the pain and frustration th - CNN

News Analysis: Minorities are disproportionately discharged under DADT. Has avoiding discussion hurt the repeal movement? - Metro Weekly

I am a gay veteran, but my experience with "don't ask, don't tell" is probably different from most you've heard, because I never told. For nearly five years I stayed silent about my sexual orientation while I served as an infantryman in the United States Army, successfully completed my deployments to Kuwait and Iraq and got a Combat Infantryman Badge to boot, then was honorably discharged from the military and went on to graduate from Syracuse University using my Montgomery GI Bill Benefits. I should be the perfect example of DADT's success. But my time in the military was one of the most stressful, unnerving periods of my life. You see, when I served for those five years, I did so in complete silence and isolation.

For a kid like me -- the first in my family to go to college, growing up in a small city in Ohio -- the military was the way to go. My family was solidly working-class, unable to afford to put me through college, and I had the misfortune of going to a high school that rendered an introverted, intelligent kid like me virtually invisible amid the throngs of skilled basketball and football players that took my school to sports glory while its academic reputation lagged further behind.

I wanted to get out of my city, to create a different life for myself, and serving in the military was the only real shot I had. I would have done anything to protect that opportunity. I was pathologically paranoid of opening up to anyone about anything, least of all the gay identity that I was struggling to come to terms with.

For years I cut myself off from my other platoon members, becoming secretive and antisocial. I was told these were my brothers, that I should be able to trust them with my life. That's what warfare demands -- total faith in those fighting alongside you -- but my fear eroded that trust. How could I completely trust a soldier who could ruin my career? So I declined invitations to hang out. I kept my distance. I was so nervous that they would somehow know, that I would say the wrong thing, maybe look at another guy for too long, and that they would figure it out, report me, and have me railroaded out of the military and right back to Ohio. I retreated into myself and, eventually, sunk into a depression.

I only came out to one person, and even then it was a serious risk. But when I got the call that my unit was deploying to Iraq, I started thinking about death in a way few 20-year-olds will ever have to, and decided I just couldn't lie anymore. I needed to trust someone, and Howard was the closest thing to a real friend I allowed myself to have during those years. Our shared nerdiness made us outcasts in the platoon, and we bonded in a way familiar to anyone who has ever had to sit outside of the popular table in the school cafeteria. When he told me that it didn't matter to him, that he was still my friend, I realized how much I had internalized the message of DADT. I had forgotten that I was someone worthwhile.

Strangely enough, it wasn't until he was OK with me being gay that I truly started to be OK with it, too. While patrolling the streets of Al Riyadh, or pulling guard duty on the rooftop while our platoon members slept, or just sitting on top of the tank in our staging area watching the sun set over the hot fields of Iraq, I was able to talk with him openly about what I was feeling and what was going on inside, finally letting someone into this internal fortress. I served in Iraq for just short of a year, and while I was physically in great danger on more than one occasion, I was -- finally -- mentally at peace.

I spent a good portion of the years afterward being ashamed of my military service; as if being gay somehow negated the sacrifices that I made and the risks that I took in order to serve my country. When talking with veterans, gays were like a dirty little secret they didn't want to acknowledge, and when I talked to my gay friends in college, nobody understood the decision to go into military service, partially because my economic background was so different than theirs. I was caught in the middle again. Once more, I didn't belong.

Recently, though, that isolation changed. A few months back, I started writing about my experiences, then speaking out at various events across the country; two weeks ago, I lobbied on Capital Hill in support of "don't ask, don't tell" repeal with fellow gay veterans from all over the U.S. It was then that I realized how alone I wasn't, and how many different versions of this story exist within the ranks of the gay veterans now fighting to serve openly. This fight gives me the camaraderie that I lost in the years I was forbidden from speaking up for fear of being fired and denied the benefits that I had earned, and whenever I write or speak out about my experiences, it feels like I'm taking a piece of myself back, a piece that was robbed of me for so many years when the policy legally prohibited me from doing either.

A great deal o - Salon.com

Last night, I sat incredulous as I watched the joint chiefs of the military sit absolutely stone-faced and grim as President Obama reiterated his commitment to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, their hands kept firmly and defiantly in their laps as most around them applauded.

I'm a gay Iraq war veteran, and I believe President Obama has been the greatest ally to LGBT people and gay veterans that we've ever had in a President. The risks he takes by simply including us in his plans to move forward with America continue to be vastly underestimated by most people, though I believe he will do much more, as evidenced by his words last night. To those supposed leaders of the United States military who watched our president with absolute revulsion as he announced his steps to end this, to those men whose faces brought back the memories of every time I was called a "faggot" while I served and forced to keep any affirmative response bottled up, thus "out" myself and lose all that I had risked everything for, I have this to say: gay veterans aren't worthless. I'm not worthless. The blood I shed was the same as every other soldier's, the tears I cried were the same, the bullets that I dodged the same; the life that I risked is the same. I'm not worthless or perverted or sick, and neither is any other gay person in this world, veteran or not. I was a gay soldier.

The time for other gay soldiers serving now to be able to say this openly is not whenever you feel comfortable, because judging from your faces that time may never come. As with any real, honest, and substantial change that has ever come, the time for this is right now.

In 1999, at 17, I entered the United States Army from a small town in Ohio, needing to find both a way in life and a way to finance the college education I so desperately needed to rise above my lower-middle class roots. My burgeoning sexuality was but a small thought in my mind, not really knowing what "gay" was, let alone whether it really described me, but that question would be answered in my mind during my formative years, which just so happened to be spent in the U.S. Army.

Now, I'm a gay veteran who risked my life for this country many times over during my time spent deployed in Iraq in 2003, and seeing their faces made my angry. It made me angry that no matter what I say or do, my service and that of many more like me is continually ignored by the dinosaurs that would be more than happy to keep DADT around forever if they had their way. They constantly make unfounded and unreliable responses about what ending it will "do" to the military, as if our military is weak enough to crumble at the very admission of homosexuality by any within its ranks. Forgive me for co-opting their slogan, but I think being "Army Strong" should be enough to handle a few gay soldiers serving openly.

I'll tell you what serving in the military under DADT did to me: It made my sexual orientation a secret shame which was never to be discussed under threat of dishonorable discharge and revocation of my benefits. It kept me distant from my fellow soldiers, for if I were to slip up and say a little too much about the real me for even a second, I couldn't trust that they wouldn't turn me in and end my career in a matter of weeks. It stunted my emotional and sexual development as a gay man so much that I was in my mid twenties before falling in love for the first time, something that happens for most people in their late teens. It sent me into the wrong places looking for the romantic affection that my heterosexual fellow soldiers were able to openly practice, discuss, and experience without the threat of disciplinary action. Most hurtful of all, being constantly reminded through DADT that my sexual orientation was bad, wrong, and perverted instilled a feeling of worthlessness in me that took years to undo following my honorable discharge from the military.

Having been an out gay man for the past 6 years following my service has allowed me to realize I couldn't have been more wrong about myself. I'm not worthless. My sexuality isn't "deviant," nor is it some secret shame that needs to be hidden so that the military establishment can continue to delude themselves into thinking they're doing the right thing by keeping military "values" firmly in line with something out of the 50's. To those "leaders," gay veterans aren't your dirty little secret anymore. We're not going to shut up, or go away, or stop shouting until those like us who currently serve are able to scream as loud as we are without the threat of disciplinary action. Thank you to President Obama for seeing this and acknowledging it, and shame on the alleged leaders of our military for continuing to remain so blind and so willfully ignorant. - The Huffington Post