This seems more suited (IMO) to a political discussion forum for the most part. The issue has been hashed, rehashed, and reheated to death. Tequila and Tom both make good points. Now, to redirect, what impact does this policy have on our ability to fight Small Wars?
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
Hashed, Rehashed, Reheated to death but not yet resolved
Are the units with which we will fight small wars ready NOW to accept OPENLY homosexual members without issues?Originally Posted by Steve Blair
Is not Politics In The Rear an appropriate place to discuss politics in the rear?
It's ironic that the most ignored voices in the early 1990s during the discussions of the "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy, were the ones (like me) saying "DADT is de jure recognition of the de facto conditions".
Regarding the use of the word professionalism-
This is one of my personal hot buttons. What professionalism? What is professionalism for IBM, or Harvard faculty should be professionalism for the military? How asinine. In the profession of arms, the profession of breaking things and killing people, we are indifferent to whether the tie matches the hanky, and harsh language is a way of life, not a cause for a reprimand. Being fat is unprofessional to a soldier, but is the perogative of success in academia or corporate America.
Let's make a deal. Soldiers won't hold civilians to military professional standards (like fitness and competence with arms) if civilians don't try to apply their standards of professionalism to the military.
Van
Why the big question?
We ask our Soldiers every day to work with people who have different beliefs and backgrounds every day. The truth is that Homosexuals are in the military right now and are serving next to heterosexual in every capacity.
The Judeo-Christian argument is out since we allow Muslims; Hindu, Buddhist and even Satanist into the military. If you are a Jew or a Gentile or a member of any other main stream religion and can serve along side a Satanist. Then you should be professional enough to serve alongside a openly gay soldier.
Sexual orientation is not an indicator of how well a person will do in battle.
Why can we not let openly gay people serve in the Military? I for one would not be bothered by them in any way.
What is the real question?
Hal Schyberg
RLTW
Frankly, I don't think having gays openly serve in the military significantly affects combat effectiveness, nor do I think a DADT policy makes any sense at all from a security point of view.
Indeed, with regard to the latter, concealing one's sexual identity might be grounds in Canada for denying access to shared US intel material.. how's that for irony? Then again, we have same sex military marriages performed by military chaplains.
More to the point, combat effectiveness does not always trump core issues of human rights. I'm reminded that "combat effectiveness" and unit cohesion was also used as an argument for racial segregation and discrimination in a previous era....
Our nations military in some cases, has been "progressive" on race matters earlier and better compared to society. I am thinking here of when we abolished segregated units during the Korean war, albeit out of necessity, the mother of innovation.
The military allowing open homosexuality, would increase the divide between the military and society. Making the military more virtuous, even society as increasingly accepts homosexuality. This divide, being something our founding fathers told us to weary of, as being detrimental to our republic.
Where does this angle lay in the debate?
Just to be clear, the policy is Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue. The last piece was a modification to the original policy that took effect a few years back. So exactly how "openly" gay does someone have to be to get the boot?
A soldier can subscribe to a homosexual publication, frequent a homosexual nightclub, be seen entering a hotel with another man, etc., but the command cannot do anything about it - it is a violation of the policy to even question the soldier about any of these things. Even if he comes out and confesses to a fellow soldier and that soldier gets upset and tells the command, the command is not supposed to follow up on that in any way.
There are only two ways in which a soldier can be booted out for their orientation: be caught in a homosexual act or put in writing that he (or she) is a homosexual and run it up through a bureaucratic process confirming their sexual orientation several times prior to the actual chapter taking place. A soldier has to work at it to get kicked out for being gay.
There are many homosexuals serving in the military whose fellow soldiers are well aware of their orientation, and it doesn't become an issue. There are others serving who stay very much in the closet, not so much because of the broader policy, but because of their fear of the reaction of their fellow soldiers. The real issue for the average homosexual soldier is down at unit level, and not really at the policy level.
During my time at DLI doing my last year prior to retiring, the gay soldiers I observed being given the boot were consciously trying to get out of the Army. They fell into two categories. The first were the slackers and cowards, who decided that Army life was not for them (or the thought of being deployed into a combat zone after graduation scared the hell out of'em), and that declaring homosexuality was an easy out. Still a lot of red tape, but faster than the old "food-for-freedom" route (which was eventually closed).
An extreme case was a female who first tried to get out on a combination of APFT failure and food-for-freedom. Unfortunately for her, TRADOC had just directed no more chapters for those issues unless there were other disciplinary problems involved. So all she succeeded in doing was obtaining a personalized, tightly supervised and much more intense personal PT program. So, she next went and tried to work the installation shrink to get a psysch chapter. Well, that takes a long time - and once she realized how long and involved it was, she gave up. And immediately submitted a written document to the commander stating that she was a lesbian and could not continue to serve. A couple of formal interviews up the chain and a bunch of paperwork later and she was gone.
Another group was perhaps unusual to DLI; these were the parasites - they'd wait until they were about to graduate from the course, and then declare their homosexuality and get themselves kicked out after having completed nearly two years of world-class language training at taxpayer expense.
So, I see it mostly as a political football. The larger issue of recognizing gay partners, gay marriage and all those things is something that has yet to be settled at the national civilian level. I agree with Bourbon in that I feel the military is not the place to be moving forward with such things until and unless a standard is set that all states and the majority of Americans accept.
My take, Stan
is that openly homosexual soldiers will no longer be an issue when the greater society from which the soldiers come no longer stigmatizes sodomy.
Some Neanderthal politically incorrect knuckle draggers resist the idea, questioning why they have less right to privacy than females.
DADT will go away shortly after the next Democrat C-in-C takes office.
The reason I posted it on this forum is because a Clinton political operative with 42 years of military service had his YouTube question aired during the Republican debate and was also present in the audience to ask the question again. The political use of retired military officers to advance social engineering agendas was what interested me.
Thanks ! Here's mine
Good question. But, I wasn’t specifically targeting what those ‘oriented’ folks do ‘off duty’ and I hope, ‘out of uniform’. Expressing one’s sexual preference in the work place is unprofessional and should never be tolerated. I’m well over 50 and work around very young and available females. Am I then (in my orientation) permitted to display desire? That’s fairly weak Sierra for a male or female in the US Military.
We do not eat where we Sierra and we do not Sierra where we eat…period. This is not an MOS-related issue; the rules apply across the board.
That very well may be the case, and the US Military will have to once AGAIN deal with the issue.
I like that twist a smigin better and I hate the use of military in political debates. If we were not at war and the politicians had nothing more than the cash in their pockets, those so-called candidates would have little better to discuss than what Bill does with his Cubans
LMAO Military Not Social Engineering
I was about to write something both agreeing and disagreeing with certain points made here, but, I saw the above statement so many times, I felt laughter bubbling out uncontrollably.
Beyond the "desegregation", we are talking about a military where women's auxiliary corps were integrated into the main force. We are talking about the military that then opened up certain "combat" MOS and other MOS that could be rightfully construed as being near or absolute in all but name combat MOS (MPs? convoy truck drivers, combat medics, etc, etc, etc).
But more than that, we are talking about the military that cut cigarettes out of rations. Has a drug and alcohol rehab program. Is considering removing pornography, in all its forms, from the AAFES. Has instituted BMI, height and weight standards. Gives 5,000 (exaggerated) vaccines for every type of illness known to man. Will discharge members for domestic violence. Has laws that make single or divorced members give up custody of their children, automatically pay support, provide health insurance, etc
This is a short list of things I can come up with off the top of my head. Ostensibly, all of these things are to effect a more disciplined and physically capable force, amounts to "social engineering".
Pardon me, though, if I have an unrestrained moment of amusement over continued assertions that the military does not "do" social engineering.
Kat-Missouri
That's a relatively fair question
As there are more than one million service members, you may need to address your problem with all of them to extract an accurate polling. Personnaly, I can deal with anyone so long as they don't take their orientation to work. Firing a weapon and being physically fit has little to do with what takes place at home or in social settings without a uniform.
Since you claim to be a 'tanker' from the cold war era (which, BTW, includes more than half of the folks herein), what's your take (you often pose the question without touching on a solution)?
Our Admin was openly gay and sadly degraded his position and authority by doing so (including foreign females complaining about his obscure behavior at work). He was otherwise a great administrator, but refused to leave his orientation at home.
…it’s a question of ethics and professional behavior.
I think Steve was trying to be diplomatic (which he was).
Muwahahahha he said "STRAIGHT!!"
Seriously, from everything I've seen in the last 20 years the problems/politics/decisions aren't a military one. It's a civilian crisis not a military one. So being asked of future political leaders is likely the right place. What I want to know is when they will openly allow women to server in combat arms and stop the silly facade that women don't see combat (both in the media and in the promotion process). That does have to do with small wars and asymmetric warfare. When the battle field is the "time" and not the "place" chosen by the enemy there is not rear echelon.
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
Bookmarks