December 8, 2010
The Pentagon's poll on "don't ask, don't tell" is beyond idiotic. Instead of asking whether the troops support repeal of DADT, the Pentagon asked only if they can learn to play nice with the gays.
Even more absurdly, the Pentagon polled all military "personnel" -- and their spouses! Only a small portion of what is known as "the military" actually does the fighting. The rest is a vast bureaucracy along the lines of the DMV.
Today's military features "victim advocates" and sensitivity training facilitators, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services personnel and a million other goo-goo positions. How did we ever take the shores of Normandy without a phalanx of "sensitivity training" counselors?
No one has any need to be reassured that the military's "social action" staff will enjoy working with gays. Whatever a career in "social action" entails, it better be gay-friendly. Frankly, it's appalling the Pentagon's poll of all military personnel and their families didn't produce better numbers for the gays.
We're interested in what the men who fight think. As the Pentagon study itself reports: "A higher percentage of service members in war-fighting units predicted negative effects."
So gays openly serving in the military will harm the "war-fighting" part of the military, but the "social action" part will thrive!
Naturally, Marines are the most resistant to overturning "don't ask, don't tell," with 58 percent of those in combat opposed.
Who cares if the Pentagon's sexual harassment task force supports gays in the military? The combat units don't, and they're the ones who do the job. The rest of us shouldn't get to vote on gays in the military any more than we get to vote on the choreography of "Chicago."
Military combat is a very specialized field comparable to nothing in civilian life. There has to be a special bond among warriors -- and only one kind of bond. The soldierly bond gets confused if some guys think their comrades are hot or if they suspect their superior is having a relationship with a fellow soldier.
It's the same confusion that results from putting girls in the military. When an officer makes a decision, nothing should enter into it except his views on the best military strategy.
The military part of the military has valid reasons for wanting to separate the idea of martial ardor and sexual attraction. Combat units can't have anything that interferes with unit cohesion, such as, for example, platoon members who are dating one another. Racial prejudice is not the same thing as sexual attraction, so please stop telling us this is just like integrating blacks in the military.
A Military Times survey in 2005 found that nearly half of all women in the military claim to have been the victim of sexual harassment -- ludicrously more than women in civilian life. By contrast, two-thirds of minorities said they were treated better in the military than in society at large.
The Pentagon's report found that service members "repeatedly" said that allowing gays to serve openly would "lead to widespread and overt displays of effeminacy," as well as "harassment" and unwelcome advances. (To which I would add, "and the occasional leak of massive amounts of classified documents.")
Gays in the military understand this better than heterosexuals in civilian life. According to the Pentagon's survey, only 15 percent of gays currently serving said they would want their units to know they're gay. (Also, 2 percent of gays currently serving giggled when asked about their "unit," which is down from 5 percent from last year.)
There are far more discharges for pregnancy and "parenthood" than for homosexuality. In the past five years, less than 1 percent of all unplanned military discharges (i.e. not due to retirement or completion of service) were for homosexuality.
Here's a record of the discharges for 2008, according to the Defense Department:
-- Drugs: 5,627
-- Serious offenses: 3,817
-- Weight standards: 4,555
-- Pregnancy: 2,353
-- Parenthood: 2,574
-- Homosexuality: 634
The main lesson from these figures isn't that we should have gays openly serving in the military, but that we need to get girls out of the military, inasmuch as they are constantly being discharged for pregnancy, parenthood and weight issues.
According to a 1998 Department of Defense report, most discharges based on homosexuality involved "junior personnel with very little time in the military" and "the great majority of discharges for homosexual conduct are uncontested and processed administratively." More than 98 percent of discharges for homosexuality were honorable.
So gays and girls can join the military, get taxpayers to foot the bill for their education and then, when it comes time to serve, announce that they're gay or pregnant and receive an honorable discharge. Indeed, there's no proof that all the discharges for homosexuality involve actual homosexuals.
Why can't the Army and Marines have their own rules? Why does everything have to be the same? Whatever happened to "diversity"?
Maybe we could have an all-gay service! They'd be allowed to wear camouflage neckerchiefs (a la Paul Lynde) and camo capri pants. To avoid any sexual harassment claims, they'd have to have their own barrack, which we could outfit with a dance club, a cosmo bar and a counseling center called "The Awkward Place." Their band would mostly play show tunes, and soldiers captured by the enemy would be taught to reveal only their name, rank and seasonal color analysis ("I am Private First Class Jeffrey Smith and I'm a 'winter.'")
They wouldn't be allowed in combat, however, for the same reason women aren't –- it takes them too long to get ready.
Most people have no clue what military life is like, least of all the opinion makers in New York, Los Angeles and the nation's capital. The military is not representative of the country at large. It is disproportionately rural, small-town, Southern and Hispanic.
We ask our troops to do a lot for very little money. Sometimes they die for us. The least Democrats could do is not pass grandstanding bills while self-righteously denouncing our servicemen as homophobes.
COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
Ann Coulter Takes Aim at Butt-Less Chaps
Posted By Lori Heine On December 4, 2010 @ 8:00 pm
Liberace, Paul Lynde, the Village People and other gay entertainers were popular for basically two reasons: they were perceived as harmless, and many people didn’t realize they were gay. Yes, today we’d say anybody who didn’t know that was pretty dense, but until quite recently, homosexuality was so unmentionable that – well – people just didn’t mention it. And in the public mind, what wasn’t spoken of simply didn’t exist. To the degree that their existence was acknowledged at all, it was rendered less threatening by being reduced to stereotype.
Now, gays in the military, I suppose, could do some harm. After all, they have guns. But this doesn’t seem to be what worries most of those who oppose letting gays serve openly in our armed forces. Polls overwhelmingly show that those serving in the military already know there are gays among them, and that many of them know exactly who they are. As long as they lie about who they are, there seems to be no problem.
They are supposed to keep quiet about themselves. And they must never, ever screw up. Straight people are allowed to make mistakes, or to do even truly evil things, and nobody says, “What else could we expect from them?” But whenever a single, solitary gay or lesbian person anywhere does anything wrong, gays and lesbians everywhere are guilty.
In her latest syndicated column, conservative diva Ann Coulter holds up Pfc. Bradley Manning, leaker of sensitive government information to WikiLeaks, as the “poster boy for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’” She hints that as goes Bradley Manning, so must go every gay man or lesbian in uniform.
Now, conservatives used to condemn groupthink, asserting that human beings must be seen as individuals rather than as members of a collective. This sort of stereotyping is beneath them. Ms. Coulter was a keynote speaker at this year’s Homocon, a convention of gay conservatives. She is hardly a homophobe. The precarious reasoning in this latest column is, quite frankly, beneath her.
Coulter asks, “have you seen a picture of Bradley Manning? The photo I’ve seen is only from the waist up, but you get the feeling that he’s wearing butt-less chaps underneath. He looks like a guy in a soldier costume at the Greenwich Village Halloween parade.”
In other words, he is a typical gay man. Which means, evidently, that so are all the others.
Does it occur to very many on the political Right that lumping gays all together like that, denying their capacity for any individual responsibility or even individual thought, is inconsistent with the principles in which they profess to believe? “Obviously, the vast majority of gays are loyal Americans,” Coulter makes a point of saying. Which would have been fair enough, and perfectly true – had she not seen fit to add “and witty and stylish to boot!” Right before this, she waxes whimsical about Manning’s possible court-martial, which “will be gayer than a Liza Minelli wedding.”
How many gays, one might ask, are not like Pfc. Manning? Is it in any way reconcilable to the American tradition of justice to punish an entire group of people for the actions of a few? And isn’t punishing people for something that has not yet happened – which may, in fact, never happen – not only un-American, but insane?
When young lesbians and gay men read the opinions of professional conservatives like Ann Coulter, will they get any appreciation for the bravery and self-sacrifice of those who join the armed forces to serve this country? Not, evidently, with regard to themselves. They may end up giving their very lives, but all they’re likely to get are lame jokes about Lisa Minelli and butt-less chaps.
Will they grow up to be better citizens if the only role-models held up to them are the Village People? How many wonderful moral lessons can they learn from a government that tells them they’re better off being slackers – if they’re not willing to lie about who they are?
Conservatives have always stressed the individual because only an individual can make moral and responsible choices. Human beings do not think as groups. Pfc. Manning’s misdeeds are no one’s but his own. But like all other individuals, only because he is capable of making the wrong choices is he also capable of making the right ones.
One question that arises – one we’re evidently not supposed to ask – is whether the military really has a handle on discipline. The bullies and thugs in their ranks give every appearance of running the show, and the brass doesn’t seem to dare to upset them. So gays must pay the price. And many of the conservatives who are supposedly such great believers in discipline throw their hands up and let it happen.
It’s nice that Ann Coulter saw fit to preside over Homocon. Her heart seems to be in the right place. Perhaps someday she will honor not only the gays and lesbians who cheer her at political events, but all of those who ignore the insults and the threats and – in fair weather and foul – put their lives on the line to keep this country strong.
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/12/04/ann-coulter-takes-aim-at-butt-less-chaps/
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