Republican Gay Hatred Keep Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
I’m not one to defend gay rights, but I’m not going to go out of my way to offend or discriminate against gays. Conservative Republicans on the other hand consider gay hatred a family value. And so there is Republican resistance to ending Don’t ask Don’t tell.
Some of the arguments for keeping the policy are steep in hate and ignorance. Here is a sample:
Jane Chastain http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=127520
“Have you taken the time to thank a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine for their service to our country lately? …There is no other job that requires this kind of selfless dedication and courage. We need the military, and now the men and women on active duty need us to do something for them they cannot do for themselves. They need to be defended from Barack Obama’s plan to expand the gay-rights agenda by using our armed forces as a laboratory for social experimentation.”
“The president is the commander in chief of our military. The folks at the Pentagon work for him. However, Congress writes the laws that set the rules that govern military personnel and “we the people” have the ability to control Congress. When the president and Congress lose their way on military matters, “we the people” not only have the option of giving our elected representatives our input, it is our duty to do so.”
This comment is strange. If a majority of Congress repeals Don’t ask Don’t Tell then “we the people” have made that decision. You can’t refer to Congress as an entity separate from the people the congressmen represent. If a majority of Congress votes to repeal it then that means a majority of the people wanted it repealed.
“The issue of fairness is one that really needs to be addressed: Is it fair to put our men and women in the military, who have no control over where they sleep or shower, in situations where they are viewed as objects of sexual desire? Isn’t military life difficult enough as it is?”
The problem with this comment is that gays have always been part of our military. Gays make up 10% of the population so it is fair to say that 10% of the military personnel are gay. It has always been that way and you can’t change that. You can’t discriminate against 10% of the population. The shower thing might be a problem in prison but it’s not in the military.
For the record, historically bonds among soldiers have in some circumstances been stronger than the bond between a soldier and his wife. Soldiers have been known to have spent years campaigning away from home and have faced death together repeatedly. Sharing that experience with fellow countrymen leads to very strong bonds being formed among the soldiers. There are strong indications throughout history of homosexual type feelings between and among the troops.
“Our civil-rights laws were written to protect citizens from discrimination based on immutable characteristics such as race and gender, not on politically correct terms like “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”
This is another strange comment. It totally disregards differences in religious believes. Those are not immutable.
These comments represent a very pathetic secular argument meant to defend a religious position. Repealing Don’t ask Don’t Tell has little effect on anything. What it does do is water down the fundamentalist stance towards gays. In this respect it is damaging to conservatives.
But we have to live in the real world not the pretend world. We can’t waste time trying to circumvent our way around the gay population. They are part of us and we need to stop obsessing over the need to keep it hidden. Fundamentalists cannot play the part of the Old Testament God and push these people back in the closet, or worse, punish them.
We are not the Taliban here. Let’s stop acting like it.
