{"id":141,"date":"2010-10-12T10:52:11","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T16:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=141"},"modified":"2010-10-12T10:52:11","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T16:52:11","slug":"flamboyant-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=141","title":{"rendered":"Flamboyant Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was Stumbling <\/a>around the web this morning looking for a topic and I came across this column<\/a> by a retired military service member who is against allowing gays to serve openly in the military.\u00a0 This kind of thing is easy enough to find…and easy enough to debunk.\u00a0 Let’s look at what the columnist has to say.<\/p>\n

First, there’s his credentials.\u00a0 He states he served in the military for twenty-two years and then retired, and that he is a combat veteran.\u00a0 One significant fact here:\u00a0 He is retired<\/em>, meaning he is no longer in the military.\u00a0 I don’t know what combat action he saw; the man does not list the years of his service.\u00a0 However, this does mean he is now a civilian, so when he rants later in the article about how civilian polls don’t count, I have to wonder if I should disregard his opinion as well.\u00a0 Arguably, his having served in the military does<\/em> give him a leg to stand on, but it is less to stand on than, say, a current service member.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, he states that the majority of the people in the U.S. military oppose the repealing of DADT and allowing gays to openly serve.\u00a0 I did a quick search and found this to be technically true:\u00a0 There was a poll of the military a year or two ago in which fifty-eight percent of the respondents (all current military personnel) voiced their opposition to this.\u00a0 This is only an eight percent majority, which is statistically significant but still not a very large margin.\u00a0 Of course, this is<\/em> the military we’re talking about, and there’s a very important aspect the column’s author (Todd Jeffreys) fails to mention, which is that the military is not<\/em> a democracy.\u00a0 Service members do not get to vote on military policy.\u00a0 It’s simply not up to them in any way, shape or form.\u00a0 Military brass have made unpopular decisions throughout all of history and the troops have accepted those decisions because it is what they are paid and trained to do.<\/p>\n

In his column, Mr. Jeffreys states:<\/p>\n

You cannot order a person to accept homosexuality.\u00a0 The military has realized this for over 220 years and is one of the major reasons why it has not allowed it.\u00a0 To allow the trampling of heterosexual rights to allow homosexual rights is not consistent with military values.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, this isn’t quite true.\u00a0 The military cannot tell a person what to think or believe, but they can<\/em> order their personnel to accept something.<\/p>\n

The last sentence in the above statement is something of a contradiction.\u00a0 Why is it not consistent with military values to trample one set of rights to allow another, but consistent to trample one set of rights to allow another?\u00a0 I could replace “one set of” with heterosexual and homosexual, and my question might work either way.\u00a0 Except I don’t see rights being trampled.\u00a0 Mr. Jeffreys himself states earlier in his column that “Nobody has a right to join the military, it is a privilege…”\u00a0 Yet here he is talking about the right to be in the military.\u00a0 And removing the ability to not serve with a particular group of individuals is hardly a “trampling” of rights.\u00a0 Nobody is forcing anyone to adopt to somebody else’s choices.\u00a0 Just because somebody else in your platoon \/ company \/ squad \/ whatever is gay doesn’t mean you will be forced to be the same.\u00a0 You simply have to accept their presence.\u00a0 That’s all.\u00a0 And if they weren’t in the military…you’d still have to accept their presence because they would still exist, whether you knew them or not.<\/p>\n

Mr. Jeffreys then falls onto an old, battered, beaten, should-be destroyed and frankly offensive argument against DADT’s repeal:<\/p>\n

A Commanding Officer will never place a flamboyantly gay person in charge of leading troops into combat if his mannerisms and way of speech reflect his sexual orientation. I guarantee you, the bonds of esprit de corps and unit cohesion, which are vital to a combat unit, would be shattered if this occurred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ignoring the comic image this might bring to mind, Mr. Jeffreys is essentially stating that anyone who admits to being gay in the military will have different “mannerisms and way of speech”.\u00a0 This is just silly.\u00a0 Sure, there are plenty of homosexual men (he’s leaving out lesbians in his above statement, I believe, as women aren’t allowed in combat positions) who are “flamboyantly gay” and as such act different from most heterosexual men.\u00a0 Although I suppose a few such guys might want to serve in the military, most probably would not.\u00a0 Flamboyant gay behavior, those lovely, ignorant stereotypes most of us are familiar with, is at odds with military action, which is probably why Mr. Jeffreys doesn’t want them leading troops into combat.\u00a0 Put more simply, people with such behavior patterns probably don’t want<\/em> to be in the military.<\/p>\n

So most of the gays serving in the military won’t have these behaviors.\u00a0 Thus, in theory, the esprit de corps won’t be ruined when they lead troops into combat.\u00a0 And for those who do<\/em> have “gay” speech patterns, etc.?\u00a0 Where is the evidence this will affect the men serving under such commanders?\u00a0 Military commanders get respect from their troops two ways:\u00a0 First, because they are placed in charge.\u00a0 They achieve positions of leadership through hard work and training, and are usually due the respect the troops are ordered to give them.\u00a0 Said training and hard work will have hopefully earned the respects of the troops under them anyway.\u00a0 A good commander will have the respect of his troops and they’ll follow his lead regardless of his manner of speech, etc.\u00a0 He could be wearing a pink tutu with little bells on his boots and dancing the mamba and they would still follow his orders.\u00a0 They would trust he has a reason for his behavior, even if they never learn it.<\/p>\n

Mr. Jeffreys finishes with the oldest argument of them all, about how people would leave the service if gays were allowed to openly serve.\u00a0 This has been argued before, and in other military forces the actual drop in military size was negligible.\u00a0 Gays serve in the military now, and often their comrades know<\/em> they are gay, but nobody talks about it and nobody has a serious enough objection to out them.\u00a0 So they all continue to serve.\u00a0 (Yes, I know they are outed by their comrades and frequently, but many, according to various polls, are quietly allowed to serve.)<\/p>\n

I apologize if this sounded like a rant.\u00a0 It probably was, but DADT and its anti-gay precursors are ancient–220 years old, as Mr. Jeffreys points out–and it is far past time to allow anyone and everyone who wants to serve in the military who is physically and mentally capable of doing so to be allowed.\u00a0 Sexual orientation, gay or straight, is not a mental disorder and should not be treated as such.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was Stumbling around the web this morning looking for a topic and I came across this column by a retired military service member who is against allowing gays to serve openly in the military.\u00a0 This kind of thing is easy enough to find…and easy enough to debunk.\u00a0 Let’s look at what the columnist has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}