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Flags used at 2007 DADT event handed out by SU at White House celebration



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Yes, this is another Bin Laden post, and it's pretty cool. After the news broke last night, a spontaneous crowd gathered in front of the White House. It reminded me of the celebration on election night in 2008 (before we knew for sure that we'd lost on Prop. 8.) I didn't go down to the White House, but a lot of my DC friends did. I saw this from Servicemembers United (@DADT) on Twitter last night:

SU just distributed tons of American flags from our 07 '12k Flags' event on the Nat'l Mall to the crowd in front of the White House tonight.
Chris Johnson from the Washington Blade talked to Alex Nicholson, who provided some details:
Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, said he wanted to join the celebration to express the sense of great joy that he felt now that a major chapter in the war on terrorism had concluded.

"I think there's a lot of symbolic significance in this for a lot of people, and so there's a lot of relief and jubilation that I personally felt and I think a lot of people were sharing," Nicholson said.

Upon arrival at the gathering, Nicholson distributed an armful of the American flags that Servicemembers United had deposited in November 2007 along the National Mall to honor the then-12,000 service members who had been discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

"We just started passing them out to complete strangers out there who were celebrating and grabbing anything with American flag colors or stars and stripes that they could find," Nicholson said. "We literally saw tons of them on TV being waived in front of the White House."

Nicholson said he doesn't think the feelings of gay service members following the death of bin Laden differ much from those of straight service members because both had been working for the terrorist leader's demise.

"Everybody's shedding their identifying characteristics — like being gay — and just showing solidarity with some common American identity," Nicholson said.

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