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Lt. Choi Is Upset That Gay Inc. Is Telling Him To Shut Up
07/05/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Apparently Lieutenant Dan Choi is a little tired of the people in “Gay, Inc.” attacking him and trying to get him to shut up. This is a little baffling since the Lieutenant gets a rather hefty salary from his folks at Get Equal, according to all the information that is out there, and even Get Equal is being called “Gay, Inc.” now. Of course, he claims not to be a leader in the netroots. After all, he has never called for people to meet up in a given location and protest. Well, one might say that he has never successfully done so since the last protest that he spoke at in front of the White House drew more curious tourists than it did actual protesters.
“I’ve gotten [shit] from other activists. I know a lot about initiations and traditions that people have to sort of pay your dues — in the military, there are procedures and protocols. You gain rank. Here, you don’t have that as much, but there are different traditional ways, that we have paid dues within the community, at least from what I’m understanding, and so a lot of people have pointed out that. I wouldn’t go to the point of saying that I don’t deserve to be in this role, but they say, “You sort of came out of nowhere,’” he is on record as saying.
Really? Well, we here at Lez Get Real kind of came out of nowhere and we have managed to make enemies from people on both sides. We have been hit with attacks from the Catholic Church and Liberty University. We are disliked by the Human Rights Campaign and Get Equal. We will call people out for being stupid if they do stupid things like handcuffing themselves to the White House fence.
Lt. Choi may be trying desperately to distance himself from Gay, Inc., but the reality is that he is already part of that machine. He is part of the ineffective disaster which constitutes the major LGBT groups. Get Equal, of which Lt. Choi is part, has leaders who pull down just shy of hundred thousand dollar salaries from a very wealthy gay man. Lt. Choi is, in effect, telling himself to shut up. Many of us who have gotten tired of his antics do not earn so much as a dime. We do not earn any money from the activism that we engage in, or if we do, it is hardly five or six figure salaries.
The problem for Lt. Choi is that the moment he started taking donor money to live off of, since all the information we have is that he has no job, he became part of Gay Inc. and not part of the netroots and grassroots movements. We, at least we here at LGR, certainly have not called on Choi to shut up. We have just called upon him to use his noggin a bit more.
I find it rather amusing that Lt. Choi is busy trying to distance himself from the people who make a fortune with their “advocacy” despite having speaking engagements and running around claiming how coming out to his parents was harder than going on Dr. Rachel Maddow’s show. This is on top of reports I have been given that Lt. Choi and his fellows at Get Equal constantly confuse Dr. Paula Brooks with me. I certainly understand the origin of the mix up since I do not get to DC very often and none of the people at Get Equal or the HRC know my face. Unlike Dr. Brooks, I suffer from a rather severe case of androphobia, a very specialized form of social anxiety, and find it painful to be in any large crowd and to be near men for any lengthy of time at all even singlely. I am not a social person the way Dr. Brooks is. While Dr. Brooks and I are often on the same page with regards to the world, we are not the same person, and any competent linguist would notice the differences in our speech and writing patterns. Dr. Brooks and I have certain similarities in our writing styles because we are both women and we are both academically trained; however, I retain a certain amount of British grammatical idiosyncracies that I learned from my mother. I also tend to be far more aware of the rhythm of my writing since I have a tendency to fall into the more natural iambic pentameter which underlies the English Language. My understanding of Greek is limited to one word, and I know that only because of its similarity to the Celtic word “sgatha”, and I am far more interested in learning Japanese since I am dyslexic/dysgraphic and it is easier to write in a syllabic alphabet than it is in a Latin scrpit.
Suffice it to say, Lieutenant Choi, we do not want you to shut up. We just want you to start being a strategist. A good strategist is one who knows her target, takes her armies to it via the best- not easiest- route, and is effective. Right now, sir, you remind me of the Major General in Pirates of Penzance. “I know more of strategy than a novice in a nunnery/when I can tell at sight a Mauser Rifle from a Javilin.”
5 Responses to Lt. Choi Is Upset That Gay Inc. Is Telling Him To Shut Up
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LGBTadvocate
July 6, 2010 at 12:01 am
See, the problem with diatribes like the one above is that when they don’t even have the facts correct, one can’t even get as far as the argumen. Bridgette writes, “This is a little baffling since the Lieutenant gets a rather hefty salary from his folks at Get Equal,” Have you been reading any of the LGBT blog sites in the last couple of weeks? In fact, Bilerico did a three-part series looking into the financial background of GetEQUAL. It was a rare exchange between the netroots and an organization that explored rumors, facts and gossip. And there has been nothing written that ever said Lt. Dan Choi was drawing a salary from GetEQUAL. In fact, that is just down right false. And categorizing GetEQUAL as part of “Gay Inc”, as if it is this big-wig, flush with cash non-profit whose executives pull down nearly six-digit salaries, is just an attempt to mislead people to prove your own personal bias. The fact is that GetEQUAL, to date, has spent less than $150k total for all of the action it has taken. The fact is that GetEQUAL’s top salary, paid to the co-founder and co-director of this new, start-up advocacy org, is $92k. Do you know that $92k is about the average salary in the U.S. for a Project Manager for a Construction Co, an Executive Pastry Chef, and Country Sheriff. We aren’t talking about people getting wealthy here. So, before you go off on your next diatribe please do us all a favor and get your facts straight. Many in the blogosphere have gone to great strides in order to make sure that fact-checking and sourcing are a hallmark trait. It is irresponsible posts like the one above that make it more difficult for all of us.
Bridgette P. LaVictoire
July 6, 2010 at 8:15 am
“Get Equal, of which Lt. Choi is part, has leaders who pull down just shy of hundred thousand dollar salaries from a very wealthy gay man.”
Now. . .hmmm. . .now $92,000 is JUST SHY of a hundred thousand dollars. In trying to obfuscate our point here, you have made it for us. Ms McGehee and Mr. Williams both pull down almost six figure salaries. That’s a good $42,000 higher than the median income in the United States and is enough to live quite comfortably in a city like Washington DC. Incidentally, only a really bad project manager for a construction company gets paid as low as $90,000. I would also like to point out that Get Equal has spent so little because they have just begun working, and because they have done incredibly little in order to actually get anything done. As for Lieutenant Choi, he has to be earning something since we have been told by sources close to him that he does not have any other job but working for GetEqual, and he is not independently wealthy.
Incidentally, given that Lt. Choi cannot tell the difference between my writing and Dr. Brooks’ writing, I would like to point out that his gigs as a linguist are probably not going well, and those probably do not even pay enough for him now.
Incidentally, what I wrote was not a diatribe. What I wrote was a fairly strong opinion. No, my last diatribe I saved for a group of doctors experimenting on fetuses using tratogenic steroids in order to cure a non-fatal aspect of a potentially fatal birth defect and experimenting to find out whether or not it will end up curing lesbianism and non-heterornormative behaviors in women.
This was not a diatribe, this was just me showing up Lt. Choi for whining about the fact that he thinks people are telling him to shut up. We’re just telling him to be smarter. That GetEqual is part of Gay Inc. at this point is obvious. Anyone getting paid anything up to that amount you listed is part of Gay Inc. I think it would be better if Ms McGehee, Mr. Williams and Lt. Choi just finally accept that just the same way that Lt. Choi had better get it through his head that the military is going to keep stringing him along not discharging him so that they can have a lot of fun punishing him once DADT is over.
Oh yes, and I don’t believe that the Sheriff of the County of Rutland in Vermont makes that much money. Of course, we’re a small county.
NG
July 7, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I don’t know about that Michael. About GetEqual, Robin and Kip are working their asses off, and the fact that someone is believing in them enough to give them money isn’t really the issue. What is the issue is being paid $92,000 to buy handcuffs at the local S&M shop and delivering customized markers they bought at some box store or website to ENDA committee members.
As for Lt. Choi, the notion that he is a victim of an unfair and unjust policy is a notion that lends to undermining equality, especially since his situation lends more being reassigned than anything else.
NG
July 5, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I’ll have to research those messages from and by him during DignityFast; If memory serves, he gave word albeit thru his spokesperson that DignityFast was an LGBT action and he was going ahead with it regardless of what everyone thought.
Bridgette P. LaVictoire
July 5, 2010 at 5:31 pm
That sounds like Lt. Choi alright. Do what he wants no matter what everyone else thinks. I wonder if he believes that he is on a one man crusade?