posted
Hear hear... And I apologize for not being more active on this topic which is also so personal to me. Just no energy for deep or rational thinking today....
Need more pop I think... *looks for a coke machine*
[ June 21, 2004, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: Telperion the Silver ]
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
I say there's no reason at all not to allow gay people in the military. Gays grow up going into locker rooms filled with hostile men or women. They know how to control themselves in such situations. They probably think that gay men and women will run around with knives and folks trying to have a go at EVERYBODY. Which is amazingly, profoundly idiotic.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
yep yep... no thinking here... just burn them gays in hell... an' all them fornicators an' masturbators an' uther unnatural people too... that's what I been sayin' this here entire time...
posted
How come I get the feeling that many of those most against serving with gay men in the military are straight men who are afraid of being raped.
Their thinking go, "If he likes boys, he's gonna rape me cause I like girls, and I rape them."
I say this because, despite not having women on the front lines, over 100 women in Irag and Afghanistan who are in our military have reported being forced into sex by thier brothers-in-arms.
From Tail Hook to now, sex in the military is almost a tradition, whether you want it or not.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Whoa, now this is getting personal to me, coming from an alma mater which has been scandalized and emasculated by a series of rape accusations.
I'm not even sure where to begin, except to say that I'll bet copious amounts of mine and other people's money that the incidence of Rape outside the military is as high or higher than in it.
While I think it's a pretty unfair mischaracterization of the points I was making, I can see how you got there
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:So, you are OK with gays in the military but just not in combat positions?
I'm okay with gays being just about anywhere, really. I can see some good reasoning behind the idea of keeping combat units free of potential sexual entanglements, so as far as that goes, I think gays and women should be considered equivalent. It seems to me that disallowing women on those grounds, but allowing gay men would be counterintuitive and unfair.
There are other reasons to keep women out of combat units. In the event of a catastrophic war with millions upon millions of casualties, men are generally more expendable than women. It's easier to recover from losing half the men in your country than it is to recover from losing half the women. I don't think women should have to register for the draft, on those same grounds.
Now, if that's the only consideration, and we ignore the sexual-relationship issue, then there is no reason to restrict gays from service, because they're just as expendable as any heterosexual man.
There are a lot of very different issues playing into this, and most of them are not prejudice. It's easy to jump right in and tell the military to be ashamed of themselves for not "integrating" the sexualities as quickly as they did the races. But I don't think this shows a lack of openmindedness and progressive thought on the part of the military or the politicians involved. They're just trying to reconcile a lot of conflicting issues, and they haven't yet landed in a place that satisfies everyone.
You know my stance on most homosexual issues — that I think politics is too quickly muddying the waters, and subjective self-evaluations by homosexuals have become gospel to one side, while narrow interpretations of scripture have become gospel to the other, and no one is able to do unbiased research without running afoul of someone's preset opinion. I personally wish there were some way to test these kinds of things short of altering the way our society works, even in a small, but vital, microcosm like the military.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Uh, Jim-Me, are you implying that I am stating that people here are idiotic, because I'm not.. The policy is idiotic... Not the people who put it into place... *is reminded of a code breaker during ww2*
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:It's easy to jump right in and tell the military to be ashamed of themselves for not "integrating" the sexualities as quickly as they did the races.
Since when is nearly 85 years, which is how long it took from the end of the Civil War to Truman's integration in 1949, in any way "quickly?"
Posts: 72 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: subjective self-evaluations by homosexuals have become gospel to one side, while narrow interpretations of scripture have become gospel to the other
quote:But when Truman said integrate, it integrated astoundingly quickly. I think that's what he was referring to.
Got proof? Episodes of M*A*S*H really don't count as empirical data in this case. The only time they were "integrated" is when there was a need for grunts to go die. With only a few exceptions, that didn't change until the 70's.
Posts: 72 | Registered: Mar 2002
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This is, by the way, part of my brilliant plan for avoiding the draft that will never happen. If Bush feels the urge to invade Brazil or someplace, though, I'm gonna come out of the closet faster than a coat with legs. Or, yeah, something cleverer than that.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Link describing how Truman's policy did not make much of a difference, and adequate policy did not come through until 15 years afterward.
Link describing how blacks were only used in token integration, and during the draft were picked quite often for grunt assignments (draft was almost exclusively battle assignment for them).
Posts: 72 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: adequate policy did not come through until 15 years afterward.
Gross misrepresentation of what the link actually said:
quote:Segregation in the military services did not officially end until the Secretary of Defense announced on 30 September 1954 that the last all-black unit had been abolished. However, the president’s directive put the armed forces (albeit reluctantly) at the forefront of the growing movement to win a fully participatory social role for the nation’s African-American citizens.
The true fulfillment of the entire scope of Executive Order 9981—equality of treatment and opportunity—actually required an additional change in Defense Department policy. This occurred with the publication of Department of Defense Directive 5120.36 on 26 July 1963, 15 years to the day after Truman signed the original order. This major about-face in policy issued by Secretary of Defense Robert J. McNamara expanded the military’s responsibility to include the elimination of off-base discrimination detrimental to the military effectiveness of black servicemen.
I didn’t say racism ended, I said segregation ended. And compared to the “all deliberate speed” with which Brown was implemented (there are still school districts under Brown-era court orders), I still say it was impressive.
From the second link:
quote: Final casualty estimates do not support the assertion that African Americans suffered disproportionate losses in Vietnam, but this in no way diminishes the fact that they bore a heavy share of the fighting burden, especially early in the conflict.
Vietnam was the first war fought entirely w/ integrated troops. Note that draft policies heavily disfavored blacks, but because of the education deferment and racism and racial policies in education. Draftees in general were far more likely to be sent to combat.
In general, the integration of the armed forces happened very quickly - certainly with unprecedented speed. The effects of past and contemporary racism are not erased by integration, nor did I claim they were.
posted
Considering that when, on issues relating to homosexuality (such as homosexual parenting) many people who profess an interest in "scientific studies" suddenly find scientific studies less than persuasive when presented with them, I tend to be skeptical when people say they merely want scientific studies . . . of something that's not really capable of being studied without (wait for it) a change in policies in the first place.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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People seem to think gay people are automatically complete perverts. My mom's cousin was openly gay. We stay at his house when we're in Florida. When I mentioned any of that to my friends, they immediately asked, "Has he, like, tried anything?"
He's my forty-year-old cousin, for God's sakes . . .
Posts: 550 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
Believe me people I know Gay people in the army and guess what... Everyone else knows there gay tooo!!! And no one really cares because he is an awesome infantryman and an awesome NCO. You can honestly be Gay in the military and not be punished for it. All you have to do is not go up to your commander and say, I'm gay. Its that simple, its literally illegal for them to ask you!
Now here is the thing, there are so many people that hate the army life that they will say they are gay to get out. I've met soldiers that literally kissed in front of a drill sergeant to get out. I'm not saying thats true of all those people, but I've seen it to be true in my experience.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I personally believe that the potential drawbacks to having open homosexuals and women in combat units are far outweighed by the benefits of gaining more dedicated, trained, and courageous volunteer soldiers.
Particularly since I think potential drawbacks will always be there, either similar drawbacks or different ones, but the presence of another soldier-particularly one that fights to get INTO a combat unit, look at what the Nisei did in WWII, and blacks did in the Civil War, and the Tuskegee Airmen-is a rare and valuable, and desperately needed, thing.
I also think arguments based on 'keeping hands to oneself' are unreasonable, as well. There isn't any basis for them in anything other than bigotry, misunderstanding, and fear. The only time that argument can apply is if it is applied to heterosexuals in mixed-sex environments, which clearly in the military it is not.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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