STILL NOT A DREAM

I am one of the most tolerant people I know (except I hate bad drivers). I have always been one of the live and let live kind of people who so form the bane of those with a perpetual desire to hurt someone else or enforce "rightness" with an iron boot. In spite of that, I was raised an army brat and spent a good long time in the 'old' navy. I remember sitting in the Repair Officer's office on the destroyer tender and watching site TV as ordered by the XO who used the 1MC to demand our attention so we could all watch as NIS led 21 young women off the ship in chains because lesbian. The XO was a real harridan. I'm glad I wasn't assigned to that ship.

In the Persian Gulf the destroyer tenders traded off. Each had something more silly than the other. As I recall the USS Puget Sound (had another moniker) could not fix its own air conditioning system. The repair ship for the Middle East Force literally could not fix their own air conditioning in the Persian Gulf even as it headed from Spring into Summer. The Cape Cod formed roving patrols of khaki with men partnered with women who roamed the decks and crawl spaces on the ship making sure that nobody was having an illicit, illegal, unapproved, unauthorized, contrary to good order and discipline, good time.

Imagine that. You work a full day doing what Chief Petty Officers do and then you get paired up with a running mate and actually go looking for trouble, in the dark, at night, on a ship, at anchor, in the middle of nowhere. I laughed so hard I think I broke something.

Nevertheless, reading Army Times today was still a jolt to the ole system. I haven't changed but the way the Armed Forces has changed is simply astonishing. Truman and Eisenhower had no idea how rapidly the military could change.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has granted a reprieve to allow a Fort Bragg Army chaplain’s husband, who was facing imminent deportation, to remain in country, their attorney said Tuesday. 

Sergio Avila-Rodriguez, the husband of Chaplain Tim Brown, an Army officer, was taken into custody by ICE on May 10 and Brown was notified he was going to be deported to his native Honduras, North Carolina TV station WRAL reported.

I went from no gays, to don't-ask-don't tell, to the chaplain is gay. What a strange journey it was.