“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”– so begins the Declaration of Independence, the document upon which the United States of America was founded. Of course, as anyone who has ever taken a history class can tell you, this sweeping statement did not apply to women or African-Americans; these groups, however, have obtained state-protected rights to existence, and, thus, there remains essentially one group without legally protected rights: homosexuals.  In fact, there are still those who are naive enough to believe that the Declaration of Independence should exclude homosexuals. They, like their bigoted forefathers, believe that a certain group is actually inhuman and, therefore, does not deserve equal rights. Thus, the issue of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy arises, in the form of a debate between normal people and those who hold on to some primitive belief in supremacy.
There is some small validity to the policy, in that banning openly gay members of the military is fairer than the outright ban of homosexuals in the military that preceded it. Before the introduction of this policy, anyone who was found to be homosexual received a discharge of an invalid, their sickness being homosexuality. But while many may think things have changed, they actually have not. Anyone who is found to be gay still receives a discharge; the only difference is that commanding officers aren’t allowed to search out information on the sexuality of their subordinates. It is doubtful, though, that many commanding officers had time to search out homosexuality in the first place, because they had more important things to worry about—like war. Maybe the United States government should subscribe to this line of thinking and worry about the need for soldiers in our interminable war with the entire Middle East, instead of worrying about individual soldiers’ particular lifestyle choices.
This brings up another point—the ludicrous political connotations in this debate over gay rights. “DADT” and other ideas like it have been used to win elections since at least 2004, when Karl Rove brought up the issue of gay rights to our homophobic country in an effort to get Americans to forget about their general discontent with the Bush administration. Needless to say, he was successful, since George W. Bush tortured us with his ineptitude for four more years. Now, however, we have Barack Obama, who has promised to end this senseless policy sometime before 2012.
Unfortunately, the DADT problem is once again an issue of votes, as it was in this year’s midterm elections. Just like the 2004 elections before them, these elections promised to bring with them spineless politicians who refuse to take a stand due to the need to gain votes from both sides of the party line. Because partisanship precedes human rights amongst politicians, our government meets an all-too-familiar problem — most people think that there is a need for a change of the law and, yet, at the same time, not one of these people is willing to change the law because they feel that nobody is on their side.
Wake up, Washington.  This country is broken and we’re looking to you, our representatives, to fix it. If you’re confused, look to the Declaration of Independence for help. All are “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights”, and “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men”. Politics exist to defend human rights, not so that politicians can make money. If the reaction to DADT is any indication, politicians nowadays have forgotten this fact.  So, once again, wake up, because the truth of the matter is simple: homosexuals deserve the same rights as the rest of us. Everyone can see that. Unfortunately, politicians are too ignorant to realize one simple fact: human rights come first.