It looks like we’ll have another class of gay soon. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” gays.
While it’s useful to group all of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgendered folk together nationally for the cause, the truth of it is that we’re all very different. Just as different as heterosexual people, one might say. 
While gay marriage is big in the news lately, there are people I know who don’t want to get married. Just not in their life view as it were. But it doesn’t make the fight any less important.
Still, we’re different enough that there are classes of gay. Older versus younger: for any of the younger that actually care to listen, you’d hear the war stories. Stories of the outward, physical discrimination. You’ve got the Stonewall gays, the one’s that quite literally fought during the beginning of the Gay Rights movement. To them, I’ve been told, us younger generation is a bunch of candy-asses that have had everything handed to us on a silver platter because of what they did. And it’s partially true.
But we fight a different kind of war now. It’s a war of ideas against the final stalwarts of ignorance within our country. You’d think that “live and let live” would be good enough in 2010, but you’d be surprised. If “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is overturned, then we’ll have been successful in destroying one of those barriers.
And we’ll have created a new class of gay exclusive to the military. The gay that served in fear that his sexuality would be discovered. Or not even discovered, but just hinted at – I believe that Roman Catholic church tends to call these things “particular friendships.” Once “Don’t Ask” is overturned all the new recruits will get to hear the war stories of the elder class, and get talked down to about how they never had to deal with it or worry about it.
For those of you who are straight, it’s a little akin to when your parents told you that they had to walk a mile to school in the snow uphill both ways. And it’s the same as when your grandparents told you that they had to walk ten miles to school in the snow uphill both ways.
Maybe though in another ten to twenty years we’ll have gotten all the classes out of our system. There won’t be any Stonewall gays and no Don’t Ask gays because all of the rights will have been won.
That’ll be a nice time.