Editor's Note

by Brian K. Mahoney, February 23, 2007

Stories find their way to Chronogram in different ways. The majority are assigned by myself or one of the other editors here. This month’s profile of Red Fox Friends, a New Paltz-based program teaching wilderness awareness, survival, and reverence, is one example (“Trails of Tradition” by Al Desetta).

Our editors and correspondents write a great deal of the magazine’s content as well. (See Beth E. Wilson’s interview with MacArthur “genius” grant-winning artist Judy Pfaff in Portfolio, page 44; or read Harold Jacob’s report on how The Artist’s Palate is raising the bar on more than taste buds in the 300-block neighborhood on Poughkeepsie’s Main Street.)

Some pieces come through contests and calls for submissions, like the poetry printed in these pages, inexhaustibly edited by Phillip Levine (page 64). This month also features a runner-up from our fall fiction contest, Brett Bevell’s tale of a Little League manager familiar with the Major Arcana, “The Holy Baseball Tarot Deck”; the story is illustrated by poet, performer, and cultural czar in exile Mikhail Horowitz, who has spent the last 20 years designing a baseball card tarot deck for just such an occasion (page 66).

And some pieces just drop in out of the blue, one of the handful of stories we choose to print each year out of the daily tide of unsolicited queries that washes up in our Inbox, like this month’s News and Politics feature, “Conduct Unbecoming."

A writer we had never worked with before, Christopher Ferraro, queried us last November, pitching a broad investigation into discrimination against gays and lesbians and women in the armed forces. These practices—summary dismissal due to sexual orientation; prohibitions keeping women from certain combat and combat-related jobs, which are resume necessities for high-ranking leadership roles in the military—would be illegal in any US workplace. In the armed forces, they’re government sanctioned. (Early in the development process for “Conduct Unbecoming,” in order to clarify the piece’s vision, we removed discrimination against women from its focus.)

For gays and lesbians, this discrimination looked to be going the way of the dodo early in the Clinton administration. The president seemed intent on fulfilling a campaign pledge to let people serve openly in the military regardless of sexual orientation. The resulting compromise, however, gave gay rights advocates little to cheer about. Crafted in tandem with those who opposed any lifting of the gay ban in the military, like “centrist” Democrat Sam Nunn, then chair of the Armed Services Committee, the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” directive of 1994 codified a Plessy v Ferguson-like separate-but-unequal rule. In brief: The military won’t ask if you’re gay; therefore, it cannot harass you for being gay. If you tell someone you’re gay, however, then you will be forced from the service for it.

(“Don’t ask, don’t tell”: These four words were just half the original catchphrase crafted by Prof. Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, the principal author of the policy. The second half—wisely dropped by proponents of DADT—was a seeming preemptory injunction against cruising: “Don’t seek, don’t flaunt.”)

Based as it is on such unsound conceptual moorings, it’s no surprise “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is a failure. For one, it has not stopped soldiers from being discharged from the military. As Christopher Ferraro reports, 6,300 military personnel were thrown out for homosexuality between 1998 and 2003. Nor has it prevented violence against homosexuals or prevented gay and lesbian soldiers from having to lead double lives in the armed services. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is the perfect piece of anti-discrimination posturing for a homophobic society.