Former Marine sergean Roger Dean Huffstetler grew up with a gay man without ever realizing it, and when he joined the armed services he bunked with a gay man in Afghanistan, or as he puts it, "I slept with a gay man for six months in Afghanistan.
No one asked. He did not tell." He didn't learn the truth about either until well after the fact and realized that while he never was disparaging towards homosexuals, he wasn't the champion for equal rights he thought he was.
The irony was that I had always imagined that if I’d lived in the time of segregation and the civil rights movement, I would be the white Southerner who was proud to march with the NAACP — that I would tear down bigoted beliefs and demand equality for all, even putting myself at risk if need be.
But I didn’t do those things. I watched the fight right in front of me without question, inactive and accepting — just like the generations before me.
The whole Washington Post editorial is worth a read.
