All day long it was like that. The congressional hearing, the conservative talking points, the guests on the evening cablers.

It was 1993 again.

Gays in the military, that singular phrase that took up all my time in the early months of Bill Clinton’s administration, is back. And 17 years haven’t made a lick of difference.

Allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly would be too disruptive to the military. DADT is a successul policy – this from John McCain, the warrior who apparently is clueless about waging war. It’s social engineering. Yeah, repeal DADT – we shouldn’t allow them damn queers in the military at all. It’ll lead to a draft because normal Americans won’t volunteer to serve with queers. It’ll lead to “alcohol use, adultery, fraternization and body art” (Saxby Chambliss, in case you’re wondering). It could cause earthquakes and other natural disasters. It’ll lead to violence against them because of the “testosterone-laden tough guys” in the military (I love that one – the queers will get the shit kicked out of ‘em and it’ll be their own fault). It’s immoral. It would create a hostile work environment. It would create new forms of sexual misconduct and increase incidents of sexual misconduct. It would create untenable situations for the poor helpless straight service members who would be subject to all manner of horrible things.

Oy. We’ve heard it all before. And it makes no more sense now than it did in 1993. Fact is, gay men and lesbians already serve openly in 25 other countries, most of them close allies, where it’s perfectly legal and not subject to a ridiculous law like DADT. And we serve openly in the U.S. military now too – wherever there are enlightened commanders and fellow soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines – without any of those dire circumstances coming to pass.

But just for the conservatives – a scared lot, really, frightened of their own shadows, not to mention terrorists and queers – we’re gonna take a year or more to repeal a law that serves no purpose but to force gay men and lesbians to lie on a daily basis.

There’s that military honor for you.

Now, I’m a dirty miscreant hippie who never served because of a very basic dislike of carrying weapons and going out to kill people. But that’s just me. Those who want to serve should be allowed to do so – as themselves and not as pretend-heterosexuals. But this isn’t new. It’s the same thing we said in 1993, and as usual, here we are again kowtowing to conservatives who’d rather pretend we don’t exist.

And that’s what DADT was all about anyway. Like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, they’d rather just say they don’t believe in homosexuality and it’ll all go away.

Of course, it won’t. We won’t. What will go away, eventually, is this blind bigotry that insists we’re somehow not human enough to have the same rights as the real humans. Yeah, think about a world without us – not just in the present, but what if none of our forebears ever existed? It would be a much more bland and boring world, that’s for certain.

Soon enough, though, DADT will go away. DOMA will go away. ENDA will arrive. And those who can’t cope will be relegated to the trash bin of history.

I live in small town that was once a hotbed of “states’ rights” champions (read: racists). There are still a few left, but the town is now populated by an eclectic mix of straights, lesbians, gay men, transgendered people, artists and people of all races, ages and sizes. Those few bigots that are left here are dying off, one at a time. Won’t be long before they’re all gone.

Doing the right thing sometimes takes way longer than we wish it did, largely because we have to fight the regressive pull – and the fear – of conservatives. They don’t do a lot of changing. But generations do, and we’ve sure got that on our side.

It may sound an awful lot like 1993 right now, but this time the top officials in the Defense Department are doing the right thing, if slowly.

This time, we win.