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Gays With Guns Send Bigots Into Derangement
Thursday, February 4th, 2010The possible repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has right-wingers frothing like a fresh batch of santorum.
(Sorry! Couldn’t resist.)
Here’s Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), who not only never served, but got six deferments to avoid Vietnam, then once questioned the patriotism of a political opponent who lost three limbs while serving:
“In my opinion, the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would very likely create an unacceptable risk to those high standards.”
Such as?
“Alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art.”
Dear God! Soldiers drinking alcohol? Fraternizing? Getting tattoos? The debauchery!
Family Research Center flack Peter Sprigg (which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be a bad gay porn name) flat cut to the case. He just wants to outlaw the gays entirely.
And then there’s Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). His worry? Hermaphrodites!
Radley, please update your Duncan Hunter blurb, he is an R, not a D.
It really infuriates me that the people saying “Our soldiers are immature, easily-distracted bigots” are considered to support the troops more than the people saying “Our soldiers are mature enough to follow orders.”
Whoops — fixed. Thanks!
This is a great excuse for a quick Simpsons clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJXFVmT8y3s&feature=related
I spent 10 years in the military. While I did have experience with some gays/lesbians, I’d say 1/3 of the men I served with were homophobic (mostly 18-21 year old males). Those gay/lesbian friends of mine had to be very careful about what they said and did; basically, they led double lives.
Do I think that openly-gay servicemenbers will distract some members of the armed forces? Absolutely! But it’s not the End-Of-Times scenario that I see some describing.
I think some of the issues come from Army and Marine units where the troops spend a lot of time out in the woods and where showers and bathrooms are open (they don’t want gay men looking at their weiners). This will be an adjustment, but I believe it will be a non-issue in 7-10 years. As with everything, there will be an adoption and adaptation period but we’ll be a better country and have a better armed forces for it.
You know, people criticize the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy—with some justification—but they forget that it’s a huge improvement over the Do Ask Do Tell Do Discharge policy that came before it. (Not to mention the Obsessively Hunt the Queerboys and Imprison Them policy that came before that…)
One of the biggest benefits of the switch to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is that, as restrictive as it was, it allowed us to experiment with having gays in the military. So when someone like Saxby Chambliss talks about what “would very likely” happen, we can point out that gays have been serving semi-openly for something like 15 years, and nobody has noticed any problems.
I find the thought of these withered old sacks of shit engaging in coitus to be repugnant, and therefore morally wrong. There should be a law against these losers bringing their shriveled little dicks anywhere near another human being, male or female.
Legislating morality is a great idea! Just as long as it’s my morals being enforced.
Don’t tell these guys about the Pink Pistols.
http://www.pinkpistols.org/
The interesting thing about the horrible acts that it might lead to (based on the Senator’s judgment) is that all those acts are already strictly regulated by either the UCMJ or the policies of the individual branches. Or at least I know they were back in the day (fifteen some-odd years ago). Tattoo’s had very definite limits on placement, adultery was against the UCMJ, and there are all kinds of regulations regarding alcohol use and fraternization. I’m sure everyone that has served in the military has an opinion on how fairly and evenhandedly punishments for those sorts of things were meted out…but it doesn’t change the fact they’re their.
In his defense, he might actually mean body piercings, not tattoos. See, it’s okay now….
Peter Sprigg is definitely in the closet. Just look at the guy.
Chambliss is probably like Col. Frank Fitts, USMC from American Beauty.
So against Teh Ghay because he wants to grab a dik-dik.
This is actually one of the few areas where I’m actually sort of sympathetic to the bigots’ position. When you enlist, the military basically owns you, and that’s a different sort of dynamic than what’s at work in broader society where, you know, we can easily say something along the lines of “if you don’t like gay marriage, don’t have one.” The military version is closer to “if you don’t like x, tough shit.” So I can understand people being skittish about it.
That said, I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact one way or another, and in many ways seems pretty similar to the issue of women in the military–sure, it might conceivably be a slight impairment in some ways, but so is not having adequate personnel because you’ve prevented 90% of the population from serving.
I spent 6 years in the Navy. And yes, there were gays. The ships functioned just fine with gays, as expected.
Openly gay sailors might cause some distraction, but so did the admission of females aboard ship. However, once the newness wore off, you could hardly notice a difference (ok, not hardly. But it didn’t become a performance issue in most cases..er..you know what I mean).
I just want my fellow sailors and soldiers to not have to worry about being dischargedf because of their sexual preference/choice/state/design/etc.
I liked Hunter’s quote from the NPR interview:
“Rep. HUNTER: No, but they arent open about it, like you just said. Its like if you want to work for NPR, you dont go to work and on the first day say, hey, I want everybody to know that Im gay. You probably dont care one way or the other as long as they, you know, get their particular job done. I think the military is the same way. Thats why dont ask, dont tell works.”
Except that if, after some time, you say “I am gay” at NPR you don’t get fired. That’s the whole point of DADT. A four year old could find the flaws in this argument. If all DADT did was forbid gay people from saying “I’m gay” the first day they joined the military, I don’t think anyone would care enough to repeal it. How does this guy even tie his shoes?
The armed forces were racially integrated by presidential order in 1948, and I’m sure there were similar absurd sentiments harbored by bigoted representatives back then. Whether they aired those sentiments or not, history shows that the opinions of idiotic members of Congress were ultimately irrelevant to the issue.
Chambliss, Hunter, et al. may flap their gums on the issue all they want; the rest of us are just waiting for the president to follow in Truman’s footsteps.
Mike Leatherwood | February 4th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
…might cause some distraction, but so did the admission of females aboard ship. However, once the newness wore off, you could hardly notice a difference (ok, not hardly. But it didn’t become a performance issue in most cases..er..you know what I mean).
Glad you corrected yourself Mike.
;)
If it’s distraction that they’re worried about as a practical issue, then they need to remove the women and put them back in the women’s corps. Gays are what? 3% of the armed forces? Heterosexual men are probably around 85%.
How are you planning on dealing with transsexuals in the military?
So 1/3 of the military might be homophobes, those people are distracted by gays no matter what.
It’s funny; most of the “right wingers” I know are open supporters of Pink Pistols, while it is the union leftie types that are the gay haters.
Windypundit@#7: Sorry to disagree with you, but DADT is in no way an improvement over what came before. After it was implemented, expulsions of went WAY up, a trend that only reversed after 9/11, when the military started becoming overextended and was less able to afford personnel loss. And as to your assertion that DADT has “allowed us to experiment with having gays in the military,” I can’t fathom what you mean, as openly gay people are still booted out of the armed forces under the law.
I should add that I’m pretty sure guys like Chambliss and Hunter care more about supporting their broader anti-gay agenda than they care about supporting the military. Their fear isn’t that the military will be impaired, it’s that it won’t–that everything will go just fine and straight military men will say “meh, no big deal” about working with openly-gay soldiers.
If you clap your hands loudly behind Saxby, he’ll slither back into his hole.
Aresen said “…might cause some distraction, but so did the admission of females aboard ship. However, once the newness wore off, you could hardly notice a difference (ok, not hardly. But it didn’t become a performance issue in most cases..er..you know what I mean). ”
But it was a performance issue and still is. Captains regularly have to deal with relationship fallouts, pregnancies and other issues, especially aboard ships. They are willing to put up with the disruption because of orders and the fact that ~50% of the population is female and and they gain access to a much bigger pool of applicants.
I see the disruption potential at least as high with gays considering the typical military member’s age and motivation, but the benefit to to the military is neglegible with respect to changing DADT. I would be willing to bet that it would reduce recruitment.
You know, people criticize the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy—with some justification—but they forget that it’s a huge improvement over the Do Ask Do Tell Do Discharge policy that came before it.
Actually, gays and lesbians were discharged (and proactively investigated) at higher rates after DADT than before.
I would be willing to bet that it would reduce recruitment.
It would certainly reduce the enrollment of knee-jerk bigots, which is a positive thing. The fewer dipshit bigots working for the state while using firearms, the better.
@ El Scorcho | February 4th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Sorry, I was just snarking at Mike Leatherwood’s 3:13 comment and messed up the HTML tag on the quote that I lifted.
[Radley: Edit function, please. I promise not to flame more than one person per
hour, I meanday, make thatweek.]Actually, the introduction of women into the military continues to create a big distraction. 60% of military women say they’ve been assaulted, and the pregnancy rate is fairly high, too. So there’s no sense pretending there is not an issue with distraction, and that distraction reduces military performance effectiveness.
While I would not oppose out-of-the-closet gays in the military, I would hope that military discipline would not suffer as a result.
Radley, your link labeled “once questioned the patriotism” did not support your accusation. The link said Chambliss criticized Cleland
“for breaking his oath to protect and defend the Constitution.”
As a VN vet myself, I see no reason to exempt VN vets from all political criticism on the basis of their military service, even if they lose three limbs in an accident while in VN. Unless, of course, you disagree with me. Then, yeah, clearly you’re a scumbag.
Judas, are you sure the increase in expulsions wasn’t due to an increase in the number of gays in the military? That is, I’m pretty sure that prior to DADT, military recruits were asked screening questions about their sexual preference, and admitted gays were not allowed to enter the military at all. Under DADT, however, they could not be asked their sexual preferences by a recruiter, so they were admitted, and could only be expelled later if they were discovered. In other words, the expulsions are a substitute for the earlier practice of not allowing them to serve at all. I’d bet that the net percentage of gays in the military has gone up since DADT.
My point about the experiment is that while gay people are still kicked out, they are nevertheless allowed to serve in the military until discovered. Since both their performance in their assignments and their sexual preferences are part of the record, social scientists now have a vast collection of data regarding the performance of gays in the military. Thus hypothetical concerns about gays ruining the military can be answered with the empirical response that they haven’t.
Chambliss is such an embarrasment to my home state. Honestly, most conservatives will tell you that these statements are retarded. They just grin and bear it since they feel obligated to. He’s not even that popular amongst the GOP in Georgia, they booed him at their last state convention and he barely beat his Democrat challenger (thanks to the Libertarian in the race I might add).
Which makes me wonder how anyone like he or Hunter could make such ridiculous statements and believe them. I don’t think they do. They’re just pandering to a small portion of their base without fear of alienating the other GOP factions that don’t buy this “hate gays” crap. They aren’t going to do it for much longer. Everyone in this country sees the writing on the wall, gays are going to be excepted whether they like it or not.
Just so everyone knows, there is a Libertarian running against him who was Marine Aviator is doesn’t think that the military should discriminate. He also doesn’t say ridiculous shit like Chambliss.
I think the whole ‘distraction’ argument stems from the same prudish values about sex and nudity that exist among totally straight people. Now I personally think gays and lesbians should have 100% all of the same rights and freedoms to be who they are without restriction just like anybody else. Especially in a country where equality and freedom is talked about as much as it is here (though talk is cheap.)
But, as a society, we are stupidly prudish and behind the times. This is the country where Janet Jackson’s 1/4 second partial nipple flash was a really big fucking deal. Where ER cut an episode that showed an elderly woman get a breast exam. Where a blurry photo of some celebrity’s coochie in a limo is worth millions and where they digitally reduced Lindsay Lohan’s boobs for a Herbie movie. Where a woman breast feeding a baby in public is still a big scandal.
All of these things are embarrassing for us as a country, but they are all connected. They are all the same issue. Further more, that same mindset carries forward into locker rooms and showers. Now, we all know that just because some one is gay it does not mean that they ‘want’ every person of the same gender that they meet. It is a bit of a sitcom joke. But at the same time, we also know that not every straight man wants every woman he meets. Does that mean that fat and/or ugly women do not have a right to a locker room or a shower without men in it? But somehow they are supposed to accept a lesbian who may, or may not, be viewing them the same way a man would? (at least in their mind)
Should she worry about it? Of course not. But her body issues and privacy issues are a part of her, imparted to her by the overriding, if ridiculous, societal rules that nudity itself is the first part of sexuality and you are only supposed to get nude in front of your lover, your doctor, or people of the same gender who don’t view you as a potential partner.
So you are not asking these people “Should gays have the same rights as everyone else?” You are asking them to set aside issues that are ingrained in them even though they shouldn’t be issues. Other countries have unisex bathrooms, coed saunas at the gym and nudity on TV because they have moved past these stupid hangups. And I totally agree that we should too. Women in our society should not be worried that every man around them will go all retarded just because we see their boobs. And men in this country shouldn’t go all retarded because we see some boobs. We have to grow up and beyond that now. When we do, these asshole congressmen will all be dead, and issues of ‘distraction’ in the military will not be a problem.
You ever notice how often when we see sci-fi movies about the military in the future the locker rooms and showers and barracks are unisex? I think if we already had that, then the gays in the military issue would be smaller.
I apologize for the length of my post. ba-doom, ching!
The reason right wing bigots don’t want to repeal DADT is simple. the military is a great place to indoctrinate impressionable young troops.
In an open military culture, homosexuality will become a none issue. Discharged soldiers with military exposure to and coexistence experience with gays will reduce the ranks of bigots the extreme right wing, religionists count on to support their hate and fear rhetoric, reducing the effectiveness to spread their message.
I’m always amused when frothing at the mouth hypocrites like Sen Chambliss go spewing patriotic, gung ho, I’m one of you, rhetoric when their past is replete with instances of what some might even construe as cowardice to avoid service that might put them in harms way….(Bush? Limbaugh? Clinton?) Yeah….I’m fooled. As a 10 year, USMC vet, I would rather you discriminate over intelligence than sexual orientation as I’ve sure had plenty enough heterosexual dumbasses marching beside me that I wouldn’t have wanted carrying a knife unsheathed around me and certainly not hauling around an automatic weapon in a combat zone. You can get in with a 32 on the ASVAB? Really? A 32? A smart pig could get 32. They give you 20 just for filling the right boxes to spell your name. No…give me some smarter homosexuals and less stupid heterosexuals.
#7 No kidding. I got to deal with Army CID for the better part of a year because I wouldn’t boink a female soldier who had been responsible for 2 outbreaks of the clap on post. That was gay behavior, according to my commanding officer.
Queer Fear needs to be flushed out of the officer corps.
“frothing like a fresh batch of santorum”
Balko, you owe me a box of monitor wipes. That is, IMO, one of the funniest things I’ve seen from you.
I’ve always wondered how “separate but equal” is wrong when it comes to race, but no one bats an eyelash about it when it comes to sex.
Folks like Santorum and Hunter remind me of these politicians and clergy who scream to high heaven about the eeeevillllzzzzz of homosexuality. They continue doing so until they get caught with an intern, a page, or a choirboy.
It’s okay, guys. You can come out now. Especially Santorum. Methinks the laddie doth protest too much.
[...] HT: The Agitator [...]
I’ve always wondered how “separate but equal” is wrong when it comes to race, but no one bats an eyelash about it when it comes to sex.
Probably because in the latter case the ‘afflicted minority’ actually wants the discrimination.
[...] Gays With Guns Send Bigots Into Derangement Published: February 5, 2010 Filed Under: Politics, Washington Tags: GOP : Richard Shelby : Saxby [...]
“Body art” is already allowed, at least in the Navy. There’s a section in the uniform regs that sets the standards. It includes tattoos, piercings, and brands. Obviously alcohol use is allowed and has been for years. Heavy drinking is even part of the military stereotype.
#39 P it seems to me you are among an a hysterically, loud “afflicted minority” that needs this discrimination to make you feel superior. Bigots are needy!
I’m all for it. The military needs a uniform redesign. They’re just so drab and 20th century and could use some flair and panache.
We’ve just returned from a deployment. Now I know why there was so much drinking and screwing. It’s all because of someone else’s sexual preferences! Maybe that’s why I’m covered in tattoos, as well. Damn the Australian Army’s lax attitude to gays/lesbians.