Originally Posted by
motorfirebox
There are some problems with how the military measures healthy body weight. There are, indeed, a number of soldiers who, despite being very well-conditioned physically--able to easily pass their physical fitness tests--have to go out of their way to meet the military's standards for body shape. My understanding is that this more frequently happens with men who are above-average height with a lot of muscle mass.
Those are edge cases, though. If, by and large, soldiers who are overweight by whatever standard the military uses are, in fact, able to pass physical fitness tests designed around an honest expectancy of what a soldier needs to be able to accomplish on the battlefield, then the body shape standards are incorrect and should be adjusted. It's my understanding that that doesn't happen, usually (or, if it does, it's blamed on slipping physical fitness standards rather than incorrect standards for body shape). So if a fat soldier does pass his PT test, it's within the military's purview to demand that the soldier alter his body shape anyway. The soldier is an edge case, and there's no need for the military to accommodate edge cases.
Non-straight sexuality can't reasonably be considered an edge case at this point in time.
As for health risks, it's suspect how difficult it is to find articles on the topic that don't come from right-leaning or very right-leaning sources. One might think that's reasonable--that those darn lefties are just banding together to cover up the truth. The problem with this theory is that the only thing us lefties love more than bashing the right is bashing each other. We're our own kryptonite, and have been since before Reagan. If the evidence were any good, frankly, the health nut left would have brained the sexual freedom left with it by now.
Bookmarks