gay it aint so.

Sometimes i find a thing i want to blog about, and sometimes it finds me. this is one of those times.

speaking of the times, yesterday i read, in the gray lady, that general peter pace, chairman of the joint chiefs - no less than our highest ranking military officer - thinks homosexuality is immoral, and he supports current Pentagon policy that prohibits openly gay people from serving in the armed forces. (shoot! since i began writing this post, i see the times has banished the article to its 'times select' archive. possibly b/c the article is gay; i cant be sure. no prob; you can read about pace's remarks on good 'ol wikipedia.)

ah - where do i begin?

i'll start with the 'immorality' pace speaks of. i got another i word for him: idiot. id say ignoramus as well, but i reserve that label for the homophobes who haven't had the experience or education to know any better. but a man who's ascended to such heights of power, who's no doubt received a first-class education in the course of his career and training, and who's no doubt traveled the world over multiple times? for this dude to be so narrow-minded - that's frightening. that's idiocy, pure and true. i mean, look at this comment from the general, in the same article:

"I believe that military members who sleep with other military members’ wives are immoral in their conduct, and that we should not tolerate that. I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts."

are you kidding me? this dude cant differentiate between adultery and consenting sex between two men? i honestly cant believe he's able to dress himself in the morning, let alone command our armed forces. pace backtracked from that comment, saying he "should have focused more on [his] support of the policy and less on [his] personal moral views."

that's grand. i mean, if he was any more magnanimous, hed be ghandi.

kudos to senator john warner (r-VA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and a former military man himself, for calling out pace: “I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the chairman’s view that homosexuality is immoral.”

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okay, done with that. now, on to the dont ask, dont tell 'policy' that our military still operates under - the policy which keeps openly gay people from serving, and spurred this michigoss.

here's my take on this policy: it is, perhaps, the dumbest, most nonsensical concept ive ever heard of. it's not strategy; it's pure homophobia.

let's examine, through the microscope of the most common reason people give for supporting the policy: heterosexual troops, forced to live and sleep and shower and whatnot in the company of homosexuals, would/will feel sexually threatened by them, or at least generally uncomfortable in their presence.

this is patent nonsense.

for one thing, there have been gays serving in the military for time immemorial. that's just a fact of life; there are gay people in every professional sector (after all, around 3-6% of the US adult male population is homosexual; that's more than enough to 'infiltrate' every niche). and surely, as the wikipedia article on 'dont ask, dont tell' - linked to above - tells us, there have been plenty of cases of gay dudes disrupting, intentionally or not, the sqauds they served with. but no more so than any other group you could gerrymander out of the army. i dont need to look it up to be sure that just as many jews, blacks, people with green eyes, peeps with red hair, and guys from the state of illinois have, historically, caused a similar amount of trouble. the pt is, there is no evidence that homosexuals have caused any more trouble serving in the armed forces than any other group. so empirically, the policy doesnt hold up.

but im more vehement about how the policy doesn't hold up philisophically. there are two basic prongs to this argument.

the first one deals with the idea that heterosexual troops, as i said above, will feel uncomfortable around openly gay men/women. (proponents of this argument often say something akin to: 'there's a reason men and women dont bunk together in the military, and the same reason carries over for gays.') puh-leeze. to me, the bottom line is that if some soldier feels uncomfortable showering in front of a gay dude, then HOW THE HELL IS HE GONNA HOLD UP STANDING BEFORE A BARRAGE OF BULLETS AND BOMBS ON THE BATTLEFIELD? IF HIS SKIN ISNT THICK ENOUGH FOR THE FORMER SITUATION, HE HAS NO BUSINESS BEING IN THE LATTER SITUATION. i mean, c'mon.

no doubt, similar arguments used to be used to support separating black troops from white troops.

the second prong more or less overlaps the first; if a homosexual wants to go stand in front of a hail of bullets, i think he should be more than welcome to do so, b/c I, FOR ONE, DO NOT WANT TO RISK MY LIFE ON THE BATTLEFIELD! i understand we need people in the army. but im not going. if gabriel and adrian want to go, im not gonna stand in their way. pardon the pun, but id say to them, before they signed up: go nuts!

this is particularly relevant right now, when our military is stretched so thin. according to the times article: "Since the policy was enacted and through the 2005 fiscal year, 9,488 service members have been dropped from the military under it, according to government statistics." that's almost ten thousand troops! that's half of bush's 'surge' right there! the military is desperate for people to sign up, but it's precluding an entire segment of the population? does that make any sense?

if you're gay, general pace can do without you sacrificing for your country. he's a great leader, but he cant just go and lead ALL types of people, now, can he? that's asking too much. he's only the highest ranking man in the armed forces, not some kind of superman.

lastly, who knows what kind of super-soldier the military might be denying itself, by virtue of the policy? it could be missing out on the next alexander the great, for chrissakes!

(while our conception of 'homosexuality' did not exist during his time, there can be no doubt that had he lived during our time, and carried on the relationships with men that he did back then, alexander the great would be considered a homosexual (or at least bi-curious).

anyway, you dont have to take my rambling logic for all this. from the article:

"In an Op-Ed article published by The New York Times on Jan. 2, General (John M.) Shalikashvili (chairman of the Joint Chiefs when the policy was adopted) wrote that conversations with gay soldiers and marines had showed him “that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers.”

“I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces,” General Shalikashvili wrote. “Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job."

now there's a thoughtful human being. former secretary of defense bill cohen agrees.

again, not allowing openly gay people in the military is not strategy; it's homophobia. and it's disgusting.