On first Navy ship home since repeal of gay ban – a first kiss

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
454
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On first Navy ship home since repeal of gay ban – a first kiss


VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.—A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted “first kiss” on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, California, descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss in the rain with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles.

Gaeta, 23, wore her Navy dress uniform while Snell, 22, wore a black leather jacket, scarf and blue jeans. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them.

“It’s something new, that’s for sure,” Gaeta told reporters after the kiss. “It’s nice to be able to be myself. It’s been a long time coming.”

For the historical significance of the kiss, there was little to differentiate it from countless others when a Navy ship pulls into its home port following a deployment. Neither the Navy nor the couple tried to draw attention to what was happening and many onlookers waiting for their loved ones to come off the ship were busy talking among themselves.

David Bauer, the commanding officer of the USS Oak Hill, said that Gaeta and Snell’s kiss would largely be a non-event and the crew’s reaction upon learning who was selected to have the first kiss was positive.

“It’s going to happen and the crew’s going to enjoy it. We’re going to move on and it won’t overshadow the great things that this crew has accomplished over the past three months,” Bauer said.

The ship returned to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story following an 80-day deployment to Central America. The crew of more than 300 participated in exercises involving the militaries of Honduras, Guatemala Colombia and Panama as part of Amphibious-Southern Partnership Station 2012.

Both women are Navy fire controlmen, who maintain and operate weapons systems on ships. They met at training school where they were roommates and have been dating for two years, which they said was difficult under “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“We did have to hide it a lot in the beginning,” Snell said. “A lot of people were not always supportive of it in the beginning, but we can finally be honest about who we are in our relationship, so I’m happy.”

Navy officials said it was the first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen to kiss first upon a ship’s return. Sailors and their loved ones bought $1 raffle tickets for the opportunity.

Gaeta said she bought $50 of tickets, a figure that she said pales in comparison to amounts that some other sailors and their loved ones had bought. The money was used to host a Christmas party for the children of sailors.

Snell said she believes their experience won’t be the last one for gays and lesbians in the military.

“I think that it’s something that is going to open a lot of doors, for not just our relationship, but all the other gay and lesbian relationships that are in the military now,” she said.

Snell is based on the USS Bainbridge, the guided missile destroyer that helped rescue cargo captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates in 2009.

World News: On first Navy ship home since repeal of gay ban
 

Cannuck

Time Out
Feb 2, 2006
30,245
99
48
Alberta
David Bauer, the commanding officer of the USS Oak Hill, said that Gaeta and Snell’s kiss would largely be a non-event and the crew’s reaction upon learning who was selected to have the first kiss was positive.

“It’s going to happen and the crew’s going to enjoy it. We’re going to move on and it won’t overshadow the great things that this crew has accomplished over the past three months,” Bauer said.http://www.thestar.com/news/world/a...hip-home-since-repeal-of-gay-ban-a-first-kiss

I'll say. There's nothing hotter than two babes makin' out
 

Omicron

Privy Council
Jul 28, 2010
1,694
3
38
Vancouver
I can't think of anything less interesting than two strangers liking to kiss.

We've got an economy being rigged by international sewage handlers to go down the toilet into their hands, and you care about two strangers *liking* each other?
 

Omicron

Privy Council
Jul 28, 2010
1,694
3
38
Vancouver
More like this?

That's like the female cop I got into a discussion with on Granville Street one night, staggering home from a good night out.

At some point I lipped off something about the philosophical curiosity of a man in a woman's body doing a man's job...

Big Giant Fat Frikkin' Mistake!
 

Omicron

Privy Council
Jul 28, 2010
1,694
3
38
Vancouver
Quoting Dylan: The time's they are a changin' !

Yeah "the times are changing", but maybe they're changing back.

In the old days (by old, I mean pre-Christian Roman-Greek times) it was presumed that everyone sat somewhere on a bisuxuality scale, such that Plutarc argued in one of his writings about the "curious" issue of a pure 100% strait versus a 100% homo. It was considered normal for adult males to find young men who were post-pubescent but couldn't grow beards attractive (which, I have been told, is still the attitude in Afghanistan today). The Spartans had officially sanctioned bondings between adult males and teens that had to be broken off when the young one hit 17. The Chinese province of Fujian had elaborate ceremonies for same-aged same-sex couples to be united for life during the Ming dynasty. In the 19th century, in the US, it was not uncommon for two women to form life-long unions. It was called a "Boston Marriage". Same-sex marriage was outlawed by the emperor Constantinius, yet even after Catholicism became the official state church of Rome, it practiced same-sex union ceremonies through the middle ages. It goes on and on. Nobody knows why some people are attracted to members of their own sex any more than anybody knows why some guys like big tits while others like big asses.

Personally I think orientation and tastes are an imprint phenomena. Imprinting is like when a chich hatches out of an egg, sees a clock, imprints that to be its mother, and forever thereafter treats the clock like a chick is suppost to react to its mother.

This happens because there are three classes of neuron:

1) Paleocortex, which are the spinal cord and medula oblongota, which gets wired up purely by genetics and cannot change unless/until the genes mutate, which in evolutionary terms could take millions of years in order for a change of behavior to occure,

2) Mesocortical neurons, which learn through a process of "imprinting", which is where the neurons start up all connected to each other in every way, and then drop the links that don't work. Humans have a mesocortex in the limbic system, and it gets imprinted from the age of 17 months to 3.5 years. It's the time of the terrible twos. Once imprinting has settled it cannot change. It was a brilliant step in evolution compared to the time it would take to change behavior with genetic mutation like the paleocortical neurons, but it gels.

3) Neocortical neurons, the top layer of our brain, which can re-learn anything any time anywhere... the mammal's greatest advantage.

I think that sex orientation is determined by imprinting on the mesocortical level. That's where the sex-drive circuits are, and that would explain why no genetic determinator can be found for orientation, yet once it's there, it's impossible to change.

You can see how if this information gets into the wrong heads, they'll do all the weirdest things imaginable to control the imprinting of their kids, only to mess the kids up more. We know that psychopathism is an imprint phenomena, detectable by the age of 3.5 to 4, but we have no idea what causes it nor how to prevent it.

So if we accept that some people imprint into same-sex orientation, it just means we're getting back to the normal old ways. Native Americans accepted it, and ancient Germans used it to freak out Romans who'd panic when they'd see big giant Olga's rushing at them with spears and horned helmets.

Likewise, it looks like the times are a'changing back to accepting that a tiny percent of the population have idiotic amounts of wealth while the reast are all peasants.
 
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