Dan Choi's Veterans Day Message

As the United States honors the contributions of its service members on this Veterans Day, Lt. Dan Choi reflects on the war that gay veterans continue to fight at home long after the battles abroad stop.

Choi shared his thoughts in a piece for The Huffington Post:

"As we fight to repeal 'don't ask don't tell,' we know that this fight can easily be more painful than physical combat, as the people we fought to protect subject us to the harsh bigotry of popularity polls and the soft bigotry of political inaction," he writes. "Caught in this battlefield, it is easy to claim victimhood and suffocate in the sadness of national betrayal. Gay Americans, like all scapegoated and stigmatized minorities in America's history, know this feeling all too well. But just as all the patriots who had to come home to fight for equality, we cannot heal our injuries by permanent sorrow and self-pity. The only treatment that can heal the wounds of betrayal and hatred is a recommitment to fight for each other, to stand up for each other, to love one another."

Read more here.