Back in May, I sad in this space that:
DADT is really a weird issue for me. On the one hand, I think it should be repealed, but on the other hand, I oppose virtually every reason that DADT opponents give as reasons why it should be repealed, and to top it off, I’m worried that the military will be unable to do its proper job because it’s going to be bogged down in yet another tar lake full of civil rights complaints/lawsuits/compliance orders, not to mention a lot of openly homosexual soldiers claiming homophobia every time they would have to be disciplined for one thing or another.
Two months ago, after the Pentagon promised to set DADT aside temporarily to abide by a Federal court decision against it, I said that that would be toothpaste that could never be put back into the tube, and that regardless of any future Congressional votes or Federal court decisions to the contrary, that DADT was gone forever as of that day.
On Saturday, the Senate matched the House to kill DADT officially. President Obama is probably going to sign it — Ironically, his administration and his solicitor general defended DADT in the various court hearings over it this year.
I have to add something else to my little rant back in May. Like I said, I oppose virtually every argument advanced by opponents of DADT who wanted it gone, but at the same time, I also oppose most arguments by supporters who wanted it to stay in place. That makes DADT an even more strange issue for me, because most of my votes inside the privacy of the voting booth are to empower that element of the American body politic. Yet, on this one stray issue where I’m not a lock-step social conservative, I didn’t feel any more comfortable in the leftist camp.
The case against DADT mainly revolved around these three arguments: (1) It’s just plain ole discriminatory and homophobic. (2) We must be consistent — A military that is racially integrated should also be fully integrated by orientation. (3) We owe this debt to generation upon generation of gay soldiers who have fought bravely and even died for their country. (4) The troops are okay with it.
Yes, DADT, and the zero tolerance policy that preceded it, was discriminatory and homophobic. But I don’t think it’s a good idea just to be getting rid of things for that reason alone. You’ve read this medium long enough to know why that’s a dangerous tar baby. On the flip side, though, I’m not saying that it’s a good idea to keep any and every public measure that is discriminatory. All I’m saying is that moderation is a virtue here. Not all discrimination is bad, and not all discrimination is good. That’s why this argument on the part of DADT opponents doesn’t wash with me, because it’s based on the notion that all discrimination is bad. Again, that doesn’t mean it’s good, either.
The response to the race argument is fairly much the same as the response to the discrimination argument — Not all discrimination is good, and not all is bad. Maybe the race issue has some different dynamics than the sexual orientation issue. And I’m not a big fan of “consistency,” i.e. political rectitude. Emerson said that a foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds, and I used to be such a “little mind,” the kind of nerd and dork who would demand political rectitude from everyone and every thing else. Don’t need to do much thinking to be “constitent” in that sense of the word, but it takes a real mature mind to be “inconsistent,” i.e. stray from an orthodoxy from time to time because politics and society just isn’t that simple or that cookie-cutter. If consistency was all that was necessary to make good politicians, then well-programmed robots could be our Congressmen. You know you need human beings and not robots as politicians, because you know that human intuition is sometimes far better than being a slave to an orthodoxy. As an aside, I know that not all forms of “consistency” are bad. Legal consistency (i.e. a well-written contract or set of laws), mathematical consistency (Eero Saarinen getting his math right so that the St. Louis Arch’s legs actually fit together), logical constituency, algorithimical constituency (why my computer hardware and software works well enough often enough such that I can write this post and show it to the world), athletic constituency (if you’re gonna average 10 a game in basketball, better to score 10 every game than to score 40 every fourth game and nothing all the other games) — Those are forms of consistency which Emerson wouldn’t consider “foolish.”
If the DADT opponents were trying to win me over with that argument, BTW, they flunked miserably. Notice the American military hasn’t convincingly won anything close to a major war since integration. Now, I say that, and people are going to walk away thinking that it’s the fault of black GIs that we didn’t win in Korea and Vietnam. That’s what you’ll think I mean if you employ simple forms of logical causation. I think the more accurate explanation is that the same political correctness (embryonic, in the late 1940s and early 1950s) that demanded and got integration of the military would also demand that that same military be hog-tied to be “sensitive” to the enemy, and be more of a social service agency in camos rather than a military fighting for victory. As an aside, from what I have come to understand, black soldiers aren’t that good, which is probably why blacks in the military tend to the “support” fields and whites still dominate active combat forces, and very much dominate the special forces, with Hispanics somewhere in the middle.
As for the third argument, all I can say is that closeted gay soldiers can be credited for every act of bravery in the military history of the United States. It was only because of them that we won the Revolutionary War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, etc. Hell, we might still be The King’s Subjects if not for George Washington’s barefoot soldiers buggering each other on the icy Potomac River on their way across. We might all be speaking German if not for the 69th Pink Regiment busting through the Western Front in ’45. Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. There’s really no way of knowing which soldiers in which capacities in which wars were gay or straight, so really, that’s not a good reason to ditch DADT — It’s not even a good reason to keep DADT. It was just an emotional bromide on the part of those who wanted DADT repealed, and an especially popular talking point among women Democrats in the U.S. Senate, I might add. (They DO have to get their hair done, after all.)
As for the fourth argument, they found out “the troops are okay with it” through a survey. Do you honestly think that men and women under the direct command of a liberal Democrat President would say they’re not okay with homosexuals serving openly among them? Even if they were told the survey was “confidential,” it is already well known that there’s no such animal in the zoo. There have been too many stories of the identities of those who filled out “confidential” surveys being uncovered, because the answers the person gave were “controversial” or politically incorrect, and the public school administrators wanted to out the un-PC students in order to suspend them and drag their good names through the mud. One more thing — Even if the troops really are okay with it, and they’re telling the truth, that’s merely because they’re younger men and women, more tolerant than their parents’ and grandparents’ generation toward those of a different orientation.
The case to retain DADT: (1) Some psychobabble about “group cohesion.” (2) The Showers. (3) Potential for blackmail and “outing.” (4) “But it was Bill Clinton’s policy.”
Like I said above, my votes go mostly to the kind of politicians who not only support DADT staying in existence, those politicians using these arguments, but they would actually return to the pre-Clinton zero tolerance policy, and actually those that were in power in 1993 were making these same kind of arguments to keep 0T as opposed to the Clinton-ordained DADT. Where I want to cringe is that most of the politicians and non-politicians making these arguments (both in 1993 and in 2010) are a hell of a lot smarter and versed in logic and common sense than to make these kinds of arguments that come off as stupid and ignorant and moronic upon cursory examination. So it’s painful to diss my own people like this, but it’s got to be done.
My main problem with the first two arguments is that they’re based on the loaded and really ignorant (not to mention false) assumption that homosexual men and women are far more given to want to rape and commit sexual assault, and engage in other sorts of forward unwanted suggestive sexual behavior and innuendo, than straight men and women. And, considering that those making these arguments here in 2010 are doing so in an attempt to keep DADT, then it further makes these arguments illogical. If you’re a man, and you think that every gay man is going to want to rape you or make a pass at you after having seen you naked in a communal shower, then it won’t matter if DADT exists or not, because a “closeted” gay will “want to rape you” or “make a pass at you” just as much as an “open” one. Therefore, I can only conclude that my fellow social conservatives making these arguments are really thinking about the return of zero tolerance, and (incorrectly) think that DADT is the same thing, or perhaps know it isn’t but want to use DADT as a stair-step towards the re-institution of 0T.
I’ve taken more communal showers than Carter has pills in my lifetime — Municipal indoor swimming pools, Boys Club, School P.E. classes, sports teams in high school, using the gym in college, and using adult gyms. To save my life, I couldn’t tell you the orientation of most of the boys and men who have occupied the same shower room as I at the same time, nor do I really care that much. There have been a few men that I knew were gay, and they knew that I knew they were, there were some about whom I had suspicions, and many who I knew were straight. So the odds are that I have taken showers naked in front of perhaps dozens of homosexual men who were themselves naked, many of whom I see more than once in my lifetime. Yet, I have never felt uncomfortable in doing so, and not a one has ever tried to rape me or make a pass at me, or even acted like I mattered to them, in or out of the shower, naked or fully clothed. (That might be more about my only slightly above average appearance at best. Come to think of it, I wish more women my age would show a little interest.) If it doesn’t make a difference in my little slice of America in my lifetime, then it probably will mean nothing in the military. At that, about the only time when there could ever be a lot of gay-straight mixing in communal showers in the military is during BT — I could imagine that even after DADT is scrapped and non-discrimination is implemented, most open homosexuals in the military will gravitate toward high IQ service roles, (e.g. translating Arabic), and the active combat units will remain almost entirely white and straight — At that point, you really won’t have much shower mingling.
The third argument is a recent addition to the stable, most cogently advanced by Ann Coulter in a column from earlier this month. Trouble is, it begets a chicken-and-the-egg paradox. I just happen to think that the only reason blackmailing gay soldiers for one thing or another or “outing” them otherwise (thereby ending their careers) only works because us straights let it work, by being homophobic to begin with. It wouldn’t work if we repeal DADT, and allow for open service and enact non-discrimination. Ironically, what Coulter worries about is best solved by repealing DADT, and if we continue DADT (as her column argues for), or revert to Zero Tolerance, then it only means the potential for blackmail remains. At that, Coulter cites Pfc. Manning, the supposed “leak” behind the recent WikiLeaks — Evidently, he bats for the home team, and leaked because DADT angered him. However, I don’t buy that, I think President Obama is the main leaker and Pfc Manning is the thumb drive, to use the correct metaphor, because all these WikiLeaks are hits against George W. Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton, strangely very little against Obama himself.
The fourth argument is easily rebutted — Clinton truly wanted what we’re about to get, but faced too much blowback (no pun intended) from advocates of Zero Tolerance in the Pentagon and Congressional Republicans. DADT was a Clintonian middle ground triangulation for outward consumption, which everyone with a brain knew was only temporary, which Clinton knew would be a stair-step to the policy he really wanted, the one we’re about to get. I happen to think that another reason Clinton agreed to DADT is because if all else failed, his judicial appointments would save the day and knock it down, and do it at such a time in the future (relative to 1993) when Zero Tolerance was not a viable option, so non-discrimination would be the only course from there. As of now, there have been at least two Federal court decisions against it, but they’re pretty much moot because they’re coming at the same time when repeal came through the legislative process.
So here I am in ideological purgatory. I want DADT repealed and non-discrimination put in its place, but I can’t give you a good reason why. Any time I try to come up with a sound-bytey reason, it reads too much like one of the opponents’ arguments above that I knock out of the park. And just my literal position has put me at odds with most of my cohorts.
I have to make a point that most people are missing. There are some who opposed DADT and wanted it repealed, NOT because they wanted non-discrimination against homosexuals in the military, but because they took the complete opposite position, that they didn’t belong in the military. However, since they’re motivated by antipathy to homosexuality, as are most DADT supporters, albeit more strident, if one wants to respond to anti-DADT “homophobes,” (note the quotation marks), one can probably use the same rebuttals that they wield against DADT supporters.
And that raises the next interesting question. Sure, Congress passed a bill to do away with DADT. But what replaces it? Can anyone help me out here? Is there any specific new policy re homosexuals serving in the military spelled out in the bill passed today? If not, then repealing DADT merely leaves it up to the Pentagon to formulate a new policy, and while their base instinct would be to bring back the pre-Clinton policy of no homosexuality anywhere in the military, they are all under the direct command of one Barack H. Obama, so they’d enact just the opposite. If today’s bill has no specific new policy, then it defaults to the whim of the Commander-in-Chief. UPDATE: S.4023 is a really short bill, and all it does is state that DADT is to be repealed, and the Pentagon should some up with something different. That means they do whatever the President wants, so we could have a new policy on homosexuals in the military every four years. I wish it would have spelled out a specific replacement. Despite that, I would have voted for it if I were in the Senate.
To net it out, my best guess on my own reason for wanting DADT gone and non-discrimination put in its place is a direct result of my attitude about homosexuality in general — I think it’s a moral sin, and I think, as a matter of faith, that those who so engage will have to answer to a certain supreme entity in the great beyond eventually. But it’s an entity over which I have no control. However, as corporeal human being living and breathing in my time and place, and as a citizen of a country with obligations to the political process, I don’t think homosexuality should be a civil crime, nor any sexual conduct between willing and competent adults in their own space should be a matter of public affairs. Yes, the military should have the ability to keep violent criminals and other sorts of criminals out of its ranks. But if we’re to reject people who just happen to make one of their legal lifestyle choices known, then nobody can be in the military, because everyone in the United States of America has done something legal and made it known that they did. Using the same logic, then the Army would have to turn away men who openly state that they eat corn flakes instead of shredded wheat for breakfast. If the military can turn away homosexuals because they think homosexuality is a sin, then again, nobody could ever go into the military, because everybody has sinned. Again, you wouldn’t want wanton murderers (even in an institution geared toward killing people) in the ranks, but you wouldn’t reject them because murder is listed as a no-no in the Ten Commandments, but because of some compelling civic reason. By the same token, you wouldn’t turn away an 18-year old man who wants to go into the Army if the worst he ever did was steal a piece of candy from a corner store at the age of 10. Stealing is just as much as Biblical sin as homosexuality. I have tried to use the occasion of this post to state why there is no compelling civic interest to discriminate against homosexuals in the military.
On the other hand, like I said six months ago, “non-discrimination” could turn into a circus for civil rights lawyers and their lawsuits. As Winston Smith wrote at James Edwards’s blog, the SPLC is waiting in the wings to hustle up some big bucks. And since they’ve pretty much changed their focus to bashing the “religious right” for their “homophobia,” even though the “religious right” has been “homophobic” for as long as we all can remember and yet the SPLC had no problem with it before, (real reason: SPLC needs new money sources, so they hope that gays still fear that Pat Robertson wants to shove them into a gas chamber), this would fit right into the Center’s new mission. That problem could be solved by a well written and relevant section of the UCMJ, but I’m doubtful that it will. Unfortunately, just as there is a lot of racial and gender affirmative action when it comes to handing out promotions in the Armed Forces, and also in the area of applying justice under the UCMJ, you can bet that there will also be a lot of orientation-based AA.
