Conduct, speech, an interesting distinction & more Grace

Anyone else find odd the Supreme Court's ruling that as long as colleges want to receive federal funding they'll have to allow military recruiters all the access they give other recruiters? It's not really the ruling that's odd. That actually makes sense. If you want federal money, you have to play nice with the feds. Military recruiters are feds... simple enough, eh?

What's odd about it is the point of contention colleges raised - the military's don't ask, don't tell policy, and the logical ramifications of the court's explanation on the people that policy affects. The court went out of its way to distinguish between conduct, namely allowing the recruiters on campus, providing them with student email addresses, administrative aid, etc. and speech. The court pointed out that colleges were still free to speak as they please about military recruiters and the policies they represent, even suggesting a college can put up an anti-war poster next to the recruiter's office, but that their conduct toward military recruiters must be the same as their conduct toward other recruiters.

Interestingly enough, don't ask, don't tell requires just the opposite. The policy suggests that conduct is tolerated, but that telling about it is prohibited. In spite of this, servicemembers with documented good conduct who have complied with the policy by not telling about their homosexuality have been kicked out of the military because someone else observed conduct like holding hands off-duty and off-post and told for them.

If the court is going to distinguish between conduct and speech, will it also apply such application of the terms to the don't ask, don't tell policy itself? Will they reinstate the otherwise productive careers of gay servicemembers who have complied with the policy but still been thrown out even though they didn't tell? I'm not holding my breath.

On a lighter note, our school's Winter Band Concert was tonight and it was another example of Grace in our world. A tiny school's tiny band filled a tiny gym with the sound of an orchestra in a concert hall. They dedicated their last song, And the Angels Called, albeit predictably, to a fallen student (see "Kyle" in the May archive). Between the memories, the beauty of the song, and their performance of it, I had to wipe away a couple of tears. I'd never heard it before and it just created one of those horribly cheesy, but extremely powerful moments that made me question how I could possibly deserve to have been sitting there, for free, and experiencing the richness of that moment. It was simply amazing, moving, worth living for. My oldest daughter attended with me, but I don't think she was as impressed. For what it's worth, we listened to Frank Zappa on the way home. I can't even begin to understand how God worked all that, but I'm glad anyway.