I'm not a Military Wife Anymore

Now before you freak out, no I am not getting a divorce and this has nothing to do with my marriage whatsoever.

This actually has to do (somewhat) with my last post about being an unconventional military spouse. I have received a slew of emails from "wives" informing me that I don't have the right to call myself a "military wife". I am not a military wife because:

1) I don't respect Veterans
2) I don't support my husband
3) I'm not patriotic
4) I don't believe in God
5) I a socialist who voted for Obama (?)

I am, basically, a mockery of an American who doesn't understand the sacrifice my husband makes to this country and because of that I am not entitled to call myself a military wife.


Now, before I delve into any of that I'm just going to first take a big, huge, deep breath and tell those emailers to go fuck themselves. Ok, got that off my chest.

Now, how anyone managed to nit pick that out of my last post is beyond me. It seems to me that my previous concerns about not saying the pledge of allegiance at military functions has proven itself to be 100% accurate. I'm getting hate mail just by SUGGESTING it. So I'm going to just reiterate a few things here.

1) I don't know how anyone ever came to the conclusion that I hate Veterans. For starters, both my grandfathers are Veterans (Army and Navy). I have 4 cousins currently serving on Active Duty (Navy, Army, and Marines) and 1 in the Army National Guard. I have 2 uncles who both served in Vietnam. And don't even get me started on my husband's family....how both of his grandfathers served side-by-side in Korea (Air Force), and his family has had at least 1 male member in every conflict going back to the Revolutionary War.

What did I ever do or say to suggest that I hate Veterans?

2) Why would anyone accuse me of not supporting my husband? I am part of the reason that he is even IN the Marines right now. When I met him he was a High School drop out who didn't even know how to drive. I taught him how to drive (which, coming from a girl with 4 speeding tickets might be a bit unnerving, but whatever). Were it not for the combined support of myself and his Recruiter (Staff Sgt. Wheeler), he would not be where he is today.

It was very painful for him to have to go back to High School at the age of 20. It was painful because it made him feel stupid, and my husband is anything but stupid. He is an autodidactic, meaning he is almost exclusively self taught. He taught himself Portuegese. He taught himself Physics. He writes, he is a gifted artist, loves to play the violin and the guitar, and is so well-versed on the subject of Military History that he could give the History channel a run for their money. He is well read in Orwell, Voltaire, Marx, Darwin, Huxley, Einstein, Lewis Carrol...he is anything but dumb. For him to have to go back to High School, an institution that already failed him once, and be forced to complete 9th grade level courses, was basically an insult. He took it very personally. But you know, he had a very supporting wife who encouraged him to finish, who encouraged him to enlist, who wrote him letters every day throughout boot camp, who moved herself across the country to Missouri just to live near him during MOS school, and who moved herself back to the other side of the country again to live with him at his permanent station.

I mean just look at those care packages I make him. Are THOSE the care packages of an unsupportive bitch? No, they aren't.

3) My apprehension at saying the pledge of allegiance does NOT stem from disdain for the country, and anyone who read my full post would have realized that. It is, in fact, due to my own personal feelings about MYSELF not feeling comfortable enough to make an oath of allegiance to the country, and really has nothing to do with hatred or disdain or any of that.

There are a lot of people in this country who do not say the pledge of allegiance, for whatever reason. Some hate America. Some do not believe in God. Some are lawyers, and some are 10 year olds crusading for gay rights. This country was built upon the tenant of Free Speech, and that is something that I wholeheartedly believe in, with every fiber of my body. Pledging Allegiance is not a requirement to be a patriotic American, and in fact it ranks rather low on my list of patriotic things (protesting, voting, jury duty, being in the military..). A truly patriotic person will DEFEND the first ammendment rights of any person to say or refuse to say whatever they want. Free speech trumps flags any day, because free speech is almost single-handedly responsible for the founding of this nation.

In the email I received, I was told that "if I didn't want to appreciate this country, I could just leave." I was also told that "the next time I refuse to stand and pledge to the flag, I should have the decency to think of the veterans who can't stand because they died defending it." FIRST, of all, those veterans did not die to defend "the flag". They died to defend the COUNTRY, to protect and secure the RIGHTS of the people in this country. They died to defend the FREE SPEECH of citizens. One cannot be selective about which rights are protected and which are not, so for someone to sit there and draft me an email wherein they basically tell me that my free speech means nothing because they disagree with it, is not only insulting, but THAT is the true disservice to the country and to the Veterans.

4) I don't believe in God. So fucking what. How does that make me less of a military wife? My husband doesn't believe in God either. Does that mean the 9 months of training he went through to become a CBRN Marine, followed by the 12 month deployment are irrelevant because he doesn't believe in God and thus can't be in the military?

Do you want to know who else didn't believe in God? Pat Tillman. In fact, there are many atheist and agnostic servicemembers in this country who do not believe in God. To suggest that their personal beliefs somehow make them less justified in defending the country is completely ignorant.

5) I'm a socialist who voted for Obama? Hehe..actually I'm a Libertarian who voted for Ralph Nader, but whatever floats your boat. I personally don't understand how being accused of voting for Obama is supposed to be an insult, nor do I understand why being a so-called "socialist" is insulting either. Most people in this country have no working knowledge of what a socialist even is, enough to accuse someone of being one.

Anyways, those emails actually really freaked me out. I feel like I can now never be myself because someone else might come through and hate me for it. That isn't normally a concern of mine, but in this case it scared me. It scared me because I KNOW those emails were from other wives, and while I knew that there were people out there who don't agree with me, I never thought it would be strong enough to the point where I would be told to actually leave the country, or have my marriage and my husband attacked, or that I would be deliberately slandered.

I don't know if those wives are actually followers of my blog, but I suspect they aren't. Or if they are, I can only assume they stopped following me.