I am of course referring to Lady Gaga's meat dress that she recently donned to accept an award at the MTV Video Music Awards. As I'm sure she wished, the dress brought an onslaught of media attention, and was condemned by numerous groups including many animal rights groups. But for all that attention, the pop star made claims that there was a political point to her dress: to protest the US Military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on homosexuality in the military.
DADT has become a hot button issue for those advocating for gay and lesbian rights in the United States. Essentially, the policy allows homosexuals to stay in the US military as long as they don't disclose their sexual orientation to others. It shouldn't take a genius to see that this policy is rife with problems. For example, what happens if a person's sexuality is disclosed without their permission? In some cases it has led to servicemen and women being dismissed from the military (you can read about one such case here). But the greater philosophical question remains; why is there fear of homosexuals participating in military service?
Historically, we know that tolerance for the gay and lesbian community has only began to improve in the last twenty years in the Western world. Canada itself had a prohibition against homosexuals in the military until a 1992 Charter challenge overturned the law. Since then gays and lesbians have been able to openly serve in the military, without any apparent damage to our pride in our nation or in our service men and women. Yet in the United States there remains a fear that is homosexuals serve openly it could affect the moral of the troops and how the public views the US Military.
I recently attended a lecture series by Professor Carl Stychin, an expert in law and sexuality. He theorizes that there are strong ties between citizenship, national identity, and sexuality. A nation can build it's reputation on how tolerant it is of it's gay and lesbian community. In Canada, over the last twenty years we have built an image of being a progressive nation in terms of equality rights for gay and lesbian citizens. Queer couples can get married and take advantage of partner benefits. Toronto PRIDE week is second only to San Francisco in size and spectacle. So perhaps in Canada, where our national identity is one of acceptance, we're more readily able to accept a military that's comprised of people open with their sexuality, whatever that may be.
What does this all have to do with Lady Gaga? If we think about the US’s image in terms of gay and lesbian rights over the last two decades, it is one that is markedly different from Canada’s. It’s become a battlefield, with two sides that can be skewed any number of ways; gay vs. straight, urban vs. rural, middle America vs. the east and west coast. So when a celebrity makes a visual statement the way Lady Gaga did (even if it was motivated by her own self-interest) it becomes more than a sensation. It becomes another site of the battle over the American identity.
-H.G. Watson
