Lt. Dan Choi, the soldier who has emerged as one of the poster faces for the movement to overturn the U.S. military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, was back training with his infantry unit this past weekend. That may surprise some, since Choi has been very public about fighting his firing from the military after coming out as gay on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show last March.
According to a recent letter to his supporters, Choi clarified that his discharge is technically still pending, so that is why he is back in Army training and preparing for a possible deployment. However, the Iraq war veteran underscored that he could still get fired any day now under the DADT law.
A West Point graduate fluent in Arabic, Choi said that it’s important to prove wrong—through action, not just words—the flawed arguments of those who oppose gays openly serving in the military. For example, during a recent debate on CNN, Tony Perkins, an opponent of the DADT repeal, predicted that if the law were overturned, so many soldiers would quit that the country would need a draft. During Choi’s recent infantry training with his fellow soldiers, he said, “we proved [Perkins] wrong.”
Choi’s return to infantry training is an interesting development, given that President Obama announced during his State of the Union address in late January that he will work with Congress and the military to repeal DADT this year. Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified recently that they support the repeal. Mullen went so far as to call it an issue of integrity for the U.S. military.
