Someone to talk to

Over at The Washington Monthly, there's an article about yesterday's House signing of the DADT discharge petition:

Earlier, Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania told the gathering of an e-mail he received from a company commander in Afghanistan, who mentioned how he often had to counsel soldiers who received divorce papers or "Dear John" letters from spouses or opposite-sex partners.

Murphy continued: "This young company commander, this captain, on his fourth deployment, wrote in that e-mail saying, 'I never thought I'd see the day when I got one of those letters myself. And I'm sitting here at three o'clock in the morning in Kabul, Afghanistan, and I have nowhere to go because I happen to be gay, and I can't walk to the chaplain, and I can't go to a battle buddy, and I can't walk to my commander's office, so I'm sitting here cradling my 9 mm pistol thinking about blowing my brains out. But I read this article about this Iraq war veteran named Patrick Murphy from Pennsylvania that's fighting for me, and it gives me hope.'"

I don't know what to add to this, except that I don't know how opponents of the repeal can believe that this sort of emotional isolation promotes unit cohesion, trust, and all those other qualities they claim to feel so strongly about. I won't mention the basic inhumanity of the situation, because that doesn't appear to be a concern of theirs.

Someone to talk to

Over at The Washington Monthly, there's an article about yesterday's House signing of the DADT discharge petition:

Earlier, Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania told the gathering of an e-mail he received from a company commander in Afghanistan, who mentioned how he often had to counsel soldiers who received divorce papers or "Dear John" letters from spouses or opposite-sex partners.

Murphy continued: "This young company commander, this captain, on his fourth deployment, wrote in that e-mail saying, 'I never thought I'd see the day when I got one of those letters myself. And I'm sitting here at three o'clock in the morning in Kabul, Afghanistan, and I have nowhere to go because I happen to be gay, and I can't walk to the chaplain, and I can't go to a battle buddy, and I can't walk to my commander's office, so I'm sitting here cradling my 9 mm pistol thinking about blowing my brains out. But I read this article about this Iraq war veteran named Patrick Murphy from Pennsylvania that's fighting for me, and it gives me hope.'"

I don't know what to add to this, except that I don't know how opponents of the repeal can believe that this sort of emotional isolation promotes unit cohesion, trust, and all those other qualities they claim to feel so strongly about. I won't mention the basic inhumanity of the situation, because that doesn't appear to be a concern of theirs.