Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: The Battle Finally Won

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

The Battle Finally Won

Sometimes it takes a while for a wrong to be righted.

After 36 years and a troubled life, California transgender veteran finally wins honorable discharge
Mercury News
By Scott Schwebke
October 26, 2020

Kelly Katherine Roser couldn’t shake the shame, self-loathing and persistent thoughts of suicide.

It was the fall of 1983 — a full decade before the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and nearly 30 years before she would transition to a transgender woman — and Roser was at war within herself. As a recently promoted Air Force staff sergeant, she struggled with proudly wearing the stripes of her new rank and living in her own skin.

One afternoon, at the height of her internal battle while awaiting a less-than-honorable discharge, Roser entered a parts room at Edwards Air Force Base. There, she slung a long, heavy electrical cord over an exposed beam and fashioned it into a noose around her neck.
[…]
In August, the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records upgraded Roser’s 1984 discharge from general to honorable.
[…]
Roser, who transitioned to a woman in 2012, has long been ashamed of the general discharge and is pleased it has been changed.

Wrong can be righted.

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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

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

The Battle Finally Won

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