In Memory

I don't even know if I have any purple clothes, but I do have this.  In memory of Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase and Billy Lucas.  Hate and intolerance are not okay.

In other news, many sources are reporting that the military services are now accepting openly gay recruits (here's the NYT's report). One thing I think that really needs to be emphasized is that this "acceptance" of the judicial ruling is grudging and perhaps temporary- they are not actually announcing an end to DADT. I fully expect them to try to find loopholes to wriggle through, and if they do, new gay recruits will possibly find themselves booted back out again.  On the other hand, if this holds for a while, I'm fairly optimistic. It seems to me that it would be harder to take rights away, once they've been granted, than simply withholding them in the first place. So while I'm not convinced this is the end of DADT, I think it's a step- possibly irrevocable- in the right direction.

Followup: A Facebook friend posted this as a status: "We are all a little weird and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."  Why should I (or anyone else) care whose weirdness is compatible with whose?