“DADT” Repealed

This post was written by Bruce Vieweg, Dean of Students at Concordia College.

I am finally able to celebrate the end of DADT – Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – that policy adopted by the military to ‘tolerate’ non-heterosexual individuals by asking them to ‘live a lie’ and to ‘keep lots of secrets.’ For our family, the end of DADT came way too many years too late for our nephew who, rather than face discharge, killed himself in a remote place on a foreign shore. We will likely never know the full extent of the awful impact that this denial of basic human rights had on countless of our sons, daughters, friends, cousins, nephews, and nieces. We need constant reminding that our world is a diverse one, filled with all types and kinds of children of God, each and every one of us. When we lose that belief, we are indeed a people in peril.

So today with tear in eye, I too celebrate one more step toward truly seeing each of us as holy, each of us as a reflection of our God.