An aging Colin Powell told me to step to the back of the bus last Sunday. I yelled "no!"

Too bad it was at a TV screen.

14 years ago I watched in horror when Powell—the one military man who could have stepped up and said that he knew discrimination, and it was flat wrong—wouldn’t do so. Instead of standing up so the bigoted brass would stand down, Powell packed it in.

Today, the salt has clearly taken over the pepper on Colin’s crown. The grey matter hasn’t budged. I watched in horror again last Sunday when he once again deferred to those un-admirable admirals who will hang homos out to dry every time.

He was quite clear when he told me—and all of you gay folk reading this—to move to the back of the bus. OK, make that sit in the back of an unarmored humvee—and put a gag in your mouth while you’re at it.

In case you missed it, Powell looked Tim Russert in the eye last Sunday on Meet the Press and said that the military just isn’t ready for us. (Obviously they know the food and the décor is tres inferior. I bet they’re planning a big welcome extravaganza).

Powell landed a solid right hook to our collective gay jaw. Pow! Well, well, well, Colin. Ain’t that a kick in the head? Thanks for your principled leadership. It truly rubbed salt in the wound to say that gays have rights at the State Department, but that the military is a different animal. So let’s be clear, sir: I can bring a date to State, but no queers at Quantico?

He has snow on the rooftop, but no fire in his belly to fight the big burly Generals. Nope. Peter Pace will pick his pack of perfect privates—and they’ll be straight and narrow ones. Yes, folks, while the alpha males towel-snap each other and brag about their conquests with girls gone wild, gay privates must remain mute about their privates. Straight guys get gals. Gays get their own Guantanamo.

I want to understand something: you can train recruits to go to Iraq without armor—or a good reason—but you shake in your boots to think a gay man or a lesbian might be on your team? Lightning will strike when I type the next sentence.

I miss Barry Goldwater.

I’m a middle-aged middle-class southern white boy. It pains me to know that during those turbulent years in the sixties when I fought racism against a growing tide of southern white bigots, that I’d grow up to have a man like Colin Powell screw me. And when I tell you I fought, I mean fought like "Meathead" fought Archie Bunker.

So let me demonstrate the insanity of Powell’s "state but not military" argument. It’s the same as an argument I had with my aunt in 1969. The country club in our small Louisiana town was integrating and—being a private club—was not required to do so.

The conversations about the pros and cons ran from insane to absurd with the younger generation fighting boldly against the older, less flexible one. The African American family that had applied included a medical doctor, his wife and three children. The doctor was Cambridge-educated but oil field red necks were discussing whether he was worthy. Get the absurdity? So once we got my last hold-out aunt to recognize how patently wrong it was, we were so proud. And her last comment, after we thought she’d seen the light, was, "It’s okay for them to golf and drink at the bar. I just don’t want those children swimming with my grandchildren in the pool."

And so now I’m given some rights by Colin Powell at the State Department, but the Pentagon is the big pool I can’t swim in. Maybe he should read Gay Like Me. Oh, that’s right, it was the book Black Like Me that opened so many eyes.

Of course, Powell hasn’t been alone on this. Who can forget Senator Sam Nunn—a DEMOCRAT—pulling the platoon out from under us? Instead of leading on the issue and calming the roiled nerves, our illustrious Senator went on a submarine, complete with a camera crew, and asked 19 year old high school graduates if they would like homosexuals to share those close quarters. You can’t stoop lower than that.

Nunn-of-the-below was accompanied by…clutch pearls…Senator John Warner. When Liz Taylor’s ex takes a walk on the homos, the hemispheres turn upside down. OK, so he’s a Republican. It still sucks.

Back then, we trotted ‘em all out: Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, Steve May, Tim McVeigh—a parade to make any gay proud. But today, Peter Pace still picks his pack of personal perfect privates. And therein lies the rub. You see, General Pace doesn’t just pick privates. Besides gay bashing, he recently set up an expectation of morality that very few can attain. He stridently stated that extramarital affairs are out of bounds. So the newly elected President, as Commander in Chief, might just be called on the carpet by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We’re looking at 18 presidential candidates—and approximately 562 ex wives. Well, almost that many. If Newt gets in, make it three more (No ex husbands. You go Hillary!).

Until I can enlist at Quantico, I want gray Grandpa Powell’s grandkids out of my pool.