Perhaps the big issue is the “know and respect” should come first. As a gay man told me how he came out at work – “If I walked in and told everyone the truth, I might have been run out of the place. Instead I waited a year.

When I came out, the asshole homophobe was run out of the place.

BTW – I did something similar to that even though I am str8. Worked at circuit city as a retirement job for 7 yrs till they died. I was the totally out in supporting gay people, even though there was only perhaps one gay person in the store.

But I was also the one with the car license plate “IMPEACH”., or course referring to that idiot jesus freak Bush JR.

The store homophobe who had been there for 9 years suddently stopped coming in on time, sometimes didn’t show at all. They canned his ass.

He went over to Best Buy (surper good, even recruit employees at gay pride event0, and got his ass fired, only can guess why – that he ran into a bunch of gay kids, workign theire – its obvious on most of them.

And the anxieties induced by his homophobic church got to him, he couldn’t stand to see bush the hater demeaned, you can guess most of the rest.

the other piece – he was basically a decent, though certainly not too brilliant guy. His life is being ruined by his church.

Everyone is the victim of religious bigorty.

A recent Palm Center study also documents that training does NOT need to happen before open service. Compare both of those facts with what SECDEF Gates—who’s already delayed an end to the ban for two years—has said, that he will NOT “certify” “until the Service Chiefs are comfortable that the risks to unit cohesion and combat effectiveness of a change have been addressed to their satisfaction and to my satisfaction”? In other words, he’s contradicting the results of his own homophobic study: the majority of troops said they’d be fine NOW with open service.

While eventually he’ll run out of excuses, in the interim, that some self-annointed gay experts are continuing to be collaborationists with him because their backbones of self-respect are not yet fully developed is repulsive. Get off your knees, boys!