First off, this is a column about national security — period.
Wait for it...
It is not about homosexuality per se.
I don't want to know about whatever lawful activity two civilians — in a civilian setting — conduct behind closed doors. It's none of my business.
Wherein the totally not homophobic Mr. Vernon launches into a high-minded discourse about national security (period) that has nothing to do with homosexuality. Except that allowing teh gehys in the military will somehow rapidly cripple that institution, possibly due to the sudden overwhelming influx of toasters.
I read the whole damn thing, and it's tough to find any argument there, let alone one focused on security. As near as I can figure, the only argument given is that allowing teh gays will require sensitivity training, that some folk just won't cotton to sensitivity training (because they see it as a distraction from the army's real mission), and that these folk may, as a result, have difficulty securing promotion. The horror!
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more, although I think his unstated argument is that folks can't function in combat if they think that their comrade in the foxhole next to them is coveting their ass. But of course, he can't make that argument because that would damage his cred as totally not a homophobe.
ReplyDeleteI think his argument was closer to "most military people are, by tradition, raging homophobes and putting gays and (heaven for-fucking-bid) gay couples on military bases would lead to problems." Mostly of the murder nature, I imagine.
ReplyDeleteI read it substituting "Negroes" for "gays."
I agree that Vernon didn't really make much of an argument, but I think the implication of the law is exactly what wobs and dave are hitting upon. Coming out and saying "well, we just don't like them" is much more crass than couching it in the numerous references in the law to "unit cohesion." Vernon's contention that the policy is not in the law is as big a pile of shit as the arguments that words "separation of church and state" don't appear in the Constitution.
ReplyDeleteJust today this subject came up in a conversation at my job (at the VA). A colleague shared that while still on active duty in 1994, he requested to be discharged from the Navy upon the implementation of "Don't ask, Don't tell." His argument was that the government had breached the contract he signed, by requiring him to serve with gays.
He was first sent to the Sergeant Major of the base (he was a Navy corpsman attached to a Marine base, hence the SgtMaj instead of a Master Chief Petty Officer), where he was chewed out and told to withdraw his request. Upon not doing so, he was forwarded to the Commanding Officer of the base who chewed him out and told him to withdraw his request. When he asked what would happen if he didn't withdraw the request he was told it would be forwarded to Washington D.C. and the treatment would only get worse. My colleague relented and withdrew his request.
In both instances after the formal conversation ended, the SgtMaj and the CO let him know that they completely agreed with his views, but this was the policy now. The CO even went so far as to say that there was nothing that could be done "officially", but if something were to happen to someone "unofficially" well, that's another story and what could really be done about it? I'm sure the "worse treatment" that my colleague would have had to endure had he advanced his case, would have paled in comparison to his interpretation that the wink-and-a-nod treatment was the okay for blanket parties or something worse.
My colleague went on to say the he knew he was serving with gay service members, and didn't have a problem with them individually, he just thought that DADT was bad policy and should be challenged. So I guess he is also totally not a homophobe, just something of a policy maven.
I think I have more thoughts on this, but it's late, and I have been fucking up the html tags on those links for the last 25 minutes, so I'm going to bed now.