BebeMoche goes Oprah

BebeMoche has an article linking to how our military is getting rid of people who are gay, despite their honorable service and a crucial need for their services. Both are interesting articles, ('course, I'm biased), and it doesn't hurt that the guy who's been discharged ("honorably") is yummy-lish (more bias and prejudice on my part). The guy was a translator whose service was apparently well decorated. Just how foolish his discharge is might be clear from the following. A couple of years ago I attended a conference for teachers of foreign languages. One of the speakers was a representative from the State Department who was in charge of the government's facilities for language instruction. It was a pretty annoying talk, actually, since he recounted all the reasons why language educators failed.* However, one thing that I remember clearly about his spiel was him encouraging us to direct our gifted students to the State Department, since there was this dire and desperate the need in the intelligence community for people with a gift and talent for languages to help with immense amount of material. So here our military is getting rid of someone whose services they desperately need simply because there's another asshole who can't deal with his being different. Feel the love.


*I find this particularly annoying because everybody forgets how to solve complex trig functions or why and when the Magna Carta was signed or the imagery and structure of John Donne's poetry within a few years of school, unless they become mathematicians or historians, etc. Yet, nobody would criticize the teachers or consider it a "failure" that the knowledge is lost. Our brains also operate on the "use it or lose it" principle. But people seem to think that since we all talk, all the time, then learning a different language should just happen... like you should be able to learn the words and fluency is yours. This, despite the fact that everybody has difficulty with foreign language and when we encounter someone who has a gift for it we are always impressed. Everyone acknowledges how difficult it is to learn a language which is not your own, but if people can't do it then it must be the teacher's fault. Okay, rant complete. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.