I admit to feeling less supportive than I ought to for gays pushing for their right to wed — in the midst of every American’s crumbling civil rights — while our country decimates foreign human rights and lives. Couldn’t gay marriage activists at least share the spotlight with peace, out of consideration for the suffering of others, proportionately? How about: Make Love (Marital), Not War. Now gay rights are being made a wedge issue with the dubious right to aspire to be a soldier. Is now the time for us to urge the military to leave no gay behind?
I object as always to the presumption of a professional soldier’s moral validity.
To be fair, it may be that the gays-in-the-military meme is being pressed upon the gay activists. These days, military enlistment has lost a great deal of its appeal. Who can the Army pretend wants to join but can’t? Who else but a demographic that’s been historically denied? I can’t say for certain that gay rights activists haven’t been rallying at recruiting offices, but reporters always seem to find someone to complain they’re being discriminated against. No doubt the war-monger message-shapers can always track down one lone homosexual or two who want to play soldier.
With today’s economy, I’m sure there are not a few gay men and women who will decry the unfairness of being denied the military career path. Being gay doesn’t mean you’re a born hairdresser or a saint. Belonging to a victimized minority doesn’t automatically imbue you with empathy or a higher social conscience to preclude wanting to be a soldier. Gays can hate and kill with the best of grunts I’m sure.
The purpose of circulating this meme, that gays want the right to serve their country in uniform, doesn’t mean the Department of Defense intends to consider granting the right. This is not about enhancing gaydom. This is about putting some spin on the department’s recruiting problems. Who says no one wants to enlist? Gays do! This pseudo-rights campaign is meant to push straight boys into military service while they think it’s their exclusive right. Not only that, the campaign theme serves to reinforce that the military will be your sanctuary from gays. And if any lurk in the barrack, at least they are prohibited from showing it. In everyday civilian life, gays were much more bearable before they held parades to shove it in your face.
American media has come to delight in gayness writ Big Gay Al. But South Park is the only showcase for gay characters who aren’t the stereotypical decorator or fashion nerd. The gay home makeover does not cease to be a novelty, but I’d say the focus group is still out on construction contractor bears, gay bar trolls, and United Court female impersonators.
Without saying gays not welcome, the move to reexamine Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is really just spiffing up the old brand. Army of One, still gay-free.
What was the announcement today? That after years of criticism for the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, the military has decided to put the question to further study. That is to say, to begin a year-long inquiry into the matter. The Army is still gay-free, in all certainty will remain so, now with a year’s warranty.
I have this message for my gay compatriots in activism. If this issue is being forced on you, and you abhor as I, the loaded nature of the media soundbite, the implication that people want to be in the military, it seems to me you have have a unique opportunity to make this message your own. Do you want to be in the business of soldiering? Tell them why.
Tell them why you want to go to war. Borrow a page from the testosterone-heavy war lovers. War crime, playing god, abuse of authority, yours for the taking.
Decry the stereotypes of gays as effete fops. Gays can kill, gays can have blood lust. Gays can shoot at women and children, maybe even with greater enthusiasm. I’ll bet gays could absolutely massacre women. And girls. With relish. If the Army is going to peddle stereotypes, answer in kind.
No telling what gays can do to boys. They can give boys equal time, the menace today’s soldiers reserve for girls. No one’s children will be safe. A gay-straight platoon will wreak havoc on all enemy’s progeny.
Imagine an inter-squad rivalry between the straights and the gays, who can out-debauch whom. Clearly an enhancement on America’s war of terror.
McCarthyism redux. Under McCarthy’s reign of error Gays were hunted just as relentlessly as Commies. Then there’s the statements which are probably a lot more true than the Professional Haters at the Pentagon would want to admit, that Communist soldiers during WW2 did acts of battlefield heroism that rivaled or surpassed those of Aude Murphy… but they were Card-Carrying.
I’ve got on one of my flutes, written in memory of Woody Guthrie, Card Carrying Communist… “This Machine Kills Fascists” a slogan he wrote on his guitars. The Reich Wing would have us forget that in the 1930s Oklahoma was a “Red” state… just not the way the phrase is used now.
If the Army in WW2 wasn’t less than 10% Red, which would be the approximate amount of Gay Soldiers, then and now… some of the most Action-movie John-Wayne acts in the war were done by men who were either Gay, or Red, Or Both. Neither one would preclude battlefield valor. McCarthy was insistent that the Army was filled with card-carrying Commies.
And, he was right about it. Where he went wrong was assuming that “communist” equals “traitor” or “evil”. He was kind of an Extremist.
You wouldn’t know it from the Medals Count. In order to get a medal, though, you not only had to be horrendously brave (or don’t-give-a-shit suicidal)… you also had to be in the good graces of the Chain of Command. One whiff of Red or Gay in the investigation would “queer the deal”. The commendations process hasn’t changed substantially. It’s more Politics than Merit.
And since that chain of command happened to include MacArthur and Patton and other Right Wing Nutjobs…
Don’s-Ask Don’t-Tell doesn’t just protect the army from pierced short-arms, AIDS ribbons and pink tanks, men don’t want to worry about being raped in their bunks like female soldiers.
Sounds like they (the allegedly straight soldiers) are afraid of their own sexuality…
Let’s see, 10% of the population is gay. That means they would have a 9-1 advantage over any gang of Gay Rapists, c’est-ça?
And that’s Ass-uming that gay men are equally prone to rape as straight men. So their irrational fear of gays is exactly that, Irrational Fear.
Big Bwave Aw, Me men afwaid their com-wads gonna take their bootie..
Or more likely, afraid of their own Sexual Urges. That IS what homophobia is about.
In jail, where booty-banditry is actually a common occurrence , according to Police Psychiatrists it’s more often committed by STRAIGHT inmates.
Also it’s fairly well know Inside that you can spot the most voracious man-sluts because they’re the ones who spout the most about “faggots” and “sissies”, make all kinds of Anti-gay remarks.
In Jail that’s called “advertising their services”.
As it is, the 10% rule is fairly consistent, whether the gay soldiers are acknowledged as such or not. So, how many, exactly, Soldiers have been arrested for raping Men? I mean, the rape of women, especially in
Occupierrr… Liberated countries, where they have immunity from prosecution, and the incidents involving children, those are pretty well documented. Strange, homosexuality isn’t implicated in those crimes.Or the ones about raping female soldiers.
But it does come back to that line from the song “Alices Restaurant”
And that’s the truth of the matter. Once you get over the fact that your job is first and foremost to Kill Human Beings, getting uptight about sexual matters is a big blatant arrogant case of Moral Relativism. People have a lot of Damn Gall bringing up that issue.
Not to mention which, in the past several wars in which the U.S. was involved, so were Greek and or Turkish soldiers. You know, the ones who are famous for Greek sex? The ones the joke “The Greek army’s motto: never leave your Buddy’s Behind”, is all about?
The Greek resistance tore the Elites of the German Army, the SchutzStaffel, a brand new everything. Then when the Americans and British welshed on their promises they turned on the British and Americans. And, these dudes are clearly not fainting frail cowards.
(George Bush is, so’s Cheney and so, in fact, are the vast majority of those who oppose rights for gay People, in or out of the military.)
Who is ‘Sir Elton John’s ‘husband’? It is another man named David Furnish and they have had a baby together! Zach!~
Sir Elton John: “Why We Chose Zachary as the Name for Our Son”
http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/stopthepresses/344703/sir-elton-john-why-we-chose-zachary-as-the-name-for-our-son/
I’ll bet Zach will excel on piano!