Ya Wanna Run That One By Me One More Time?

So, let me see if I have this straight. Let’s say you’re an assistant CEO of a California County and your employment is a [correction] "non-civil service contract job, which means you can be unhired/fired for a variety of good reasons" And it turns out you were canoodling a gentleman with which your duties required you to negotiate over contracts, and otherwise engaging in inappropriate email banter with your immediate supervisor.

So your ultimate bosses, let’s say a Board of Supervisors, found out about this, spent over $300,000 of the taxpayer’s money to investigate you and your canoodling and then unhired your sorry [non civil service] behind.

So you sue the county for a bundle, claiming that you were sexually harassed by the Supervisor whom with you were exchanging inappropriate email. And the county – facing over a million in legal fees needed to defend themselves from you – decide to cut their losses and offer to settle for $180,000.

So you sign the settlement and walk away with $180,000.

Ah, well, nice work if you can get it.

Ask! Hup One, Two; Tell! Hup, One, Two

The Commander in Chief, President Obama, wants the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy rescinded this year. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified that he felt that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military is the right thing to do. General Powell, who derailed allowing gays to serve in 1993, has had a change of heart and now wants the ban “reviewed.” Defense Secretary Gates wants to issue orders that will relax the law’s enforcement until a year-long “review” can take place, but to date no stop-loss order has been issued regarding gay service personnel, a simple military order that would put dismissing gays on account of their gayness alone on hold.

Meanwhile, Joint Chief Mullen said the Pentagon will decide how to change the way the military is enforcing the law now and will begin a year-long “study” of how dumping the ban would work, including changes to be made in military benefits and other “equal treatment under military codes” would work.

John McCain, who had previously (when trolling for votes) said that if the top military brass told him lifting the ban was O.K. he’d be fine with that, has suddenly had a change of mind and after hearing from the top military brass saying they’re fine with lifting the ban, he now opposes it (trolling for future votes, fingers to the wind again, eh John?). And some of the loopier homophobe Congressmen went on record to speculate then hyperventilate about totally weird made-up “gay” scenarios pulled out of their psyches, which is always so creepily revealing. But scary, knowing those sexually kinky, fetid, roiling imaginariums are the same ones crafting laws that can do serious injury to the citizenry.

The whole thing brought about a very funny bit on The Daily Show wherein it was proposed that McCain wasn’t being a hypocrite but that he had forgotten what he’d previously said on account of his being old, so what we really need to keep our country safe is to ban OLD people from serving in Congress. After all, if they’re forgetting things, that’s a dangerous situation in a place that writes complex laws. Totally disrupts legislative preparedness and congressional cohesion. Worse, it becomes an awful burden on all the rest of Congress, having to deal daily with these OLD people all the time, often in close quarters, creeping up behind people, fiddling with their hearing aids in public, really icky stuff like that. We really shouldn’t have to subject our elected officials to such rampant OLDNESS. Awful!

Well, this is all déjà vu-ness. All the same tired old arguments were heard when it was proposed that Africa Americans be integrated into the general military population. Ditto when women wanted to sign up. Now, it’s the gays turn in the barrel. Nobody learns anything.

What remains so sad about all this is how willing, easy and quickly We The People are to enact laws that deny or remove basic rights and block or deny equal protections and deny equality under law from our fellow citizens.

And how hard and fiercely we battle -- spending years and years “reviewing” and “studying” and foot dragging -- when it finally becomes more than obvious that such laws need to be struck down or repealed.

Speaks volumes to our self-righteously, publicly professed commitment to “equal justice under law.”