That’s it. I’m chiming in on the "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" debate, because I served on a nuclear submarine with a guy who got kicked out of the Navy for being gay.

His name was Chief Petty Officer Timothy McVeigh (he later became a Senior Chief) and he was a member of the crew of the USS Asheville, the Los Angeles class fast-attack submarine I first reported to in 1993. He was one of the more experienced members of our crew. He was especially respected for his knowledge of shipboard operations and ability to function in stressful situations, of which there were many.

Years after I transferred off the Asheville, I picked up a copy of USA Today and saw McVeigh on the cover. He had been outed at a base in Hawaii for being gay and was being kicked out. Read about it here and read about how he won the case here. I’m glad it worked out for him, but the whole thing still pisses me off.

McVeigh was an asset when it came to operating a submarine. He was smart, hard working, dedicated and reasonable in crazy-ass situations. Life on a submarine can be trying. There is very little sleep, and you live in a metal tube that dives thousands of feet beneath the ocean. Nuclear energy, flooding and the threat of fire are omnipresent. You sleep inches from your crew members and there is no natural light. It’s surreal and dangerous, and McVeigh had been doing it for a dozen or more years when I first met him.

But my point is this: Submarines only allow men onboard, and they spend months on end together underwater. Nobody had any problem with McVeigh while we did all this, and not only did we work together; we were proud to work with him. We looked to him for guidance, and the Navy lost that guidance when they kicked him out because he happened to love men instead of women.

I hear all of this shit about how gay people in the ranks will mess everything up. It’s bullshit. War and the military are not games. It’s about every person doing their job well and about staying alive. This “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” debate is about machismo and homophobia — basically, soldiers and sailors and airmen don’t want to sleep next to or work with men or women with a different sexual preference than theirs. Replace the word “gay” with “black” or “Native American,” and the debate becomes offensive.

Not only that, but the powers that be say it’s about time, so maybe we’ll finally get over this ridiculous bullshit, like so many other countries have.

Roundtable newbies John C. Scott and Sarah Garrecht Gassen join me to review the week with Arizona Illustrated anchor Bill Buckmaster. Watch it after the jump.

Regional Transportation Authority boss Gary Hayes was our guest tonight on Arizona Illustrated's Friday Roundtable. He talked about taking over the bus system, the downtown's light-rail system and whether we'll have freeways in our future. (Short answer: No.)

Watch it after the jump.

The morning daily catches up with the Rosemont Mine story broken by Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News yesterday:

Arizona's legislative chiefs frustrated a majority of Tucson-area legislators by writing the U.S. Forest Service a letter friendly to the proposed Rosemont Mine without consulting them - yet saying they were writing "on behalf of the Arizona Senate and the House of Representatives."

Tuesday's letter from Senate President Bob Burns and House Speaker Kirk Adams praised Rosemont as a "tremendous economic opportunity for the State of Arizona," cited Arizona's rich mining history, and encouraged the Forest Service to "allow Arizona to continue to move forward responsibly to utilize our rich and vital copper resources."

But late Thursday, Burns backed off, under criticism led by Jonathan Paton, a Tucson-area state senator and mine opponent of his party who is running for Congress against another mine opponent.

Jeff Rogers, chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party, tells us he's preparing to roll out several proposed changes to the City of Tucson charter at the Monday meeting of Democrats of Greater Tucson.

Rogers, who calls the program "Strong Voter," will advocate for a public election to create a "strong mayor" form of government, which would mean the mayor would essentially take over the job of the Tucson city manager.

"I think it addresses the need for accountability," Rogers says. "You have a strong mayor, you pay him a real wage—maybe not as much as a city manager, but there's probably somebody who would be willing to do it for $90,000 or something."

Rogers would also like to see ward-only elections; the city now is now in court fighting a new state law that mandates both ward-only and non-partisan elections. (Rogers wants the city to keep partisan elections.)

Finally, Rogers would like to scrap the current staggered elections every two years and elect the entire council for four-year terms in the same year.

Rogers says he hopes the City Council agrees to put the charter changes on the November ballot this year, but he says an initiative campaign is not out of the question.