→ 20 Sep 10 at 6 pm

I don’t care if she’s overexposed - Lady Gaga is more interesting than Miley Cyrus or Janet Jackson or even Madonna (last 15 years).

DADT is wrong, and she’s preaching to a choir, I get it. But I can’t help but be happy that she’s political so early in her career instead of just shocking costumes and visual feast-like videos.

This speech isn’t great, that’s true too. I would love an internship as Gaga’s speech writer. I’d put in more facts and figures, less empty rhetoric pulling at the emotional heartstrings of only those who share a small overlap of personality - they are gay or some other queer persuasion.

Matthew Sheppard was a murder victim - I am an absolutist, so I do not believe the motive is relevant, nor the mindset of the murderers once it was proven that it was premeditated. Mentioning his name as a banner under which to fight does nothing for me. It would be best to stipulate that America has drafted legislation since and as a result of Mr. Sheppard’s cruel fate to include homophobia as a illegal discriminator.

The Prime Rib metaphor is also weak. I would have reached for something less visceral (images of her meat dress came too quickly to mind, making the whole section seem self-referential - which was probably the point?). Not only that, but Prime Rib is not vital for anyone’s diet, and comparing prime rib (a cut of meat we can enjoy - although it’s no filet mignon) to equality is especially difficult because it casts our freedoms as dead - not evolving, not thriving, but as a pile of putrefying flesh that we, as Americans, must hack at for our satisfaction.

Equality is one of the liberties we are offered as citizens - it’s amongst others which are constantly being adapted, changed, shrunk, cast aside, and embellished by courts and legislation. Why not cast it as a living creature?

As I eat my dinner (spaghetti bolognese), I draft this rewrite changing the metaphor to breathing:

Equality is the life-bringing breath that drives all other freedoms - it nourishes us all and at home we think nothing of it as we use it every day. To deny some members their equality is to ask them to suffer and asphyxiate, to choke on their difference, their uniqueness. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell requires that good men and women, gay, lesbian, the non-heterosexual, those who wish to serve and defend this great nation, should be asked to do it without air, without breath in their lungs. They fight for us, silent and gasping in the deserts, in the mountains, on the beaches and at sea, and we refuse to help them, even admit that there is a problem. We watch them carry a heavier burden because of the secret they must keep. Their platoons, their brigades, and their fellow soldiers must watch and ignore them as they turn blue while we, at home, in peace and stability, in freedom, dare suggest that people who have this one difference, this one subtle difference, cannot possibly be good enough to do the difficult work of preserving, helping, believing and dying for this great nation … unless they hold their breath.