Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: It Is About Time

Friday, September 16, 2016

It Is About Time

Well it finally happened, a trans person was promoted in the Navy. This is a major step for trans servicemembers since we were allowed to serve.

In a First, Openly Transgender Service Member Promoted
NBC News
By Fiona Dawson
September 15, 2016

Just two and a half months ago, as NBC OUT exclusively reported, Navy Lt. Cdr. Blake Dremann was one of four service members historically stepping out of Secretary of Defense Ash Carter's office a week prior to the announcement ending the ban on transgender troops. Then at a ceremony last Friday, Dremann became the first known openly transgender service member promoted since that repeal. To top it off, everyone on his promotion stage was transgender.

Flanked by the American, Navy and Senior Executive Service flags, wearing his male summer whites and surrounded by his parents, family, friends, admirals, officers and representatives from a number of advocacy groups, Dremann stood to attention at the front of the President's Room at the Navy Memorial.

"I couldn't have asked for better people, a better place, or a better person to swear me in. I wouldn't have changed a thing," Dremann told NBC OUT.

Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Operational
Energy Amanda Simpson (left)
and Navy Lt. Cdr. Blake
Dremann (right) Ames Photography

And who was there to promote him? Amanda Simpson the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy.

At his invitation, Dremann was promoted by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Amanda Simpson, who in 2010 became the first transgender woman appointee ever in the U.S. government, and today is the highest ranking transgender person in the Department of Defense as well as the federal government.

"I suppose I should start by addressing the significance of today's ceremony," Simpson said in opening. "To my knowledge this is the first U.S. military promotion ceremony for an openly transgender officer."

Hopefully Lt. Cdr. Blake Dremann will be the first of many and who knows maybe someday he will be Admiral.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Friday, September 16, 2016

It Is About Time

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