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Do Ask, Do Tell: Speech Is a Fundamental Right, Being “Listened to” Is a Privilege is the third of a sequence of my Do Ask, Do Tell books. The general themes of the books are individualism and personal responsibility, and especially how these precepts apply to “gay equality” and free speech issues.

The first book was Do Ask, Do Tell: A Gay Conservative Lashes Back in 1997. The book was motivated by the early fight over gays in the military that ensued after President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. There is a long narrative going back to my own expulsion from a civilian college and then my experience with the military draft, which makes for a certain irony. The book, toward the end, switches from historical and autobiographical accounts to policy discussions on discrimination in other areas, which are presented in a manner concentric to the military issue as like a “superstorm core.” One important concept is that individual rights are connected to the ability to share risks (like availability for military service) that belong to the common good.

In late 1998, I published a supplementary booklet, less than a hundred pages, called Our Fundamental Rights, which does not carry the Do Ask, Do Tell prefix.

In 2002, I published Do Ask Do Tell: When Liberty Is Stressed, a set of essays that respond to the issues accentuated by the 9/11 attacks and by new legal threats to Internet speech (such as the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, or COPA). One idea that I covered in the book was a “Bill of Rights II.”

The latest book traces these widely dispersed issues centered around individualism further, particularly in areas like various threats to Internet freedom that we take for granted, gay equality (including marriage and parenting), the workplace, and eldercare, the latter driven by rapid demographic change.