In the mid-90s, the Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans recognized a basic point:
we cannot accept the view that Amendment 2's prohibition on specific legal protections does no more than deprive homosexuals of special rights. To the contrary, the amendment imposes a special disability upon those persons alone. Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint.
IOW, they treated homosexuals as "persons" that deserve to be treated the same basic way as everyone else, having basic constitutional rights. This was not treating them "special," but actually, the alternative would be clearly wrong. The state "cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its law."
As Kayla Williams mentions in her book Love My Rifle More Than You, war tends to lead to the dehumanizing of those deemed enemies. Not only combatants, but everyone in the broad class of people deemed potential enemies. She found this harder to do given her job meant she had to personally interact and learn more about their language and culture.
It came to me that just the photo* of Maher Arar is quite important since it humanizes him. The ability of some like himself who were detained as alleged "enemy combatants" to provide various types of testimony in the public sphere furthers this goal. To call to mind that these are "persons," who have rights. Deserve some basic respect inherent to being human. This is somehow deemed foreign to some people.
The same general concept underlines why it is fundamental that Wesam al-Delaema is being tried in the criminal courts, in the open, and protected (to the degree it does offer protection -- is our word enough? some would question it given our general lack of respect of international law) under a special agreement -- he is not some mostly faceless person in solitary confinement somewhere.
He is a person with rights. A human being. Even if it makes us uncomfortable to think of even those charged with attacking our troops in that fashion. If some are way -- like Phoebe on Friends to even eat an animal "with a face," imagine the value of seeing people ... the human connection is a key reason for the confrontation clause etc.
To bring out the person in view of the community to be tried. Not hidden away or tried only by some military tribunal or special representative of the President. They are wary of us seeing their faces. Such humanity makes bare jingoistic verbiage a bit harder to take. One hopes for more, and many in the homosexual community surely are demanding it, but sometimes even the basics are ignored.
A basic reminder, even a look, of basic humanity is sometimes an important first step. Just ask the slaves of the 19th Century.
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* See "cf" link in last entry.