The don't ask don't tell policy

I believe that everyone that is physically capable of serving in the military should be allowed to do so without regards to their sexual orientation.

Not everyone is comfortable with openly talking about sexual issues whether they are straight, gay, bi or a transsexual, which means that you will always find people that are willing to talk openly about their preferences, which in of itself will cause problems in some situations whether it be for the individual or for the group.

How can you tell an individual that yes we need all the people that we can get to go fight for us, then turn around and tell that same individual that we do not need you due to who you like, regardless of what you can do to help the war effort? This only serves to belittle the individual that has signed on to do what he or she can for our country.

The individuals that are gay or bi who make the decision to join our military already know that there has to be discretion as to who to confide in when it comes to their sexuality given their own experiences and how comfortable they are in telling people about themselves, which means that they should be trusted enough to make the decision for themselves as to whether they come out while in the military.

Most people have come across individuals that have struggled with their decision due to what people may think of them.

Most people who don't want anything thing to do with the whole situation will site their religious beliefs. Here is one very specific question for those who site religious text as their reasoning:

Where the bible does use the term "lay with" with the meaning of having consensual sex and uses the term "get to know" with a meaning of rape, where specifically in the bible does it state that preferring to "lay with" the same gender constitutes an abomination?

The Gulf Coast Oil situation

When it comes to the mess that has evolved in the gulf coast due to the oil rig sinking, I think that what is needed is better direction in what to do to stem the flow of the leaking oil and more resources in dealing with the ever expanding oil slick that is heading to the coastline, with the resources directed at limiting what ends up of the areas that are at most risk of distruction due to even a small amount of the oil entering into that specific environment along with clean up of the areas that can be cleaned.

Yes we do need to know what went wrong and part of that is knowing who made what decisions that helped create the problem on the rig which caused the fire in the first place and then the subsequent sinking and ever expanding oil slick. However at this point we need the people who are capable of stepping up and getting people to stop bickering about who's fault it is and to separate the clean up effort and the attempts at stopping the flow so that people who are dealing with one aspect are not bothered by the other aspect.