BREAKING NEWS! Senate Votes to Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell Bill 63 - 33!

Don't ask; don't tell permitted homosexuals to serve in the military if they adapted to military life and didn't make an issue of their sexuality in doing so.

Will we see the creation of "Gay Associations" in military units bent on making military culture more acceptable to their organized advocates? I expect we will.

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The people who have indicated that the repeal will have an impact on combat readiness certainly have both military and combat experience: McCain, the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Marines, and the polled soldiers and marines who currently are serving on the front lines.

McCain is a politician. He has dramatically changed his stance on this issue, and on a couple other important issues, in exchange for his 30 pieces of silver from the tea party right. James Amos is a fundamentalist Christian. Fundamentalist Christians have made fighting rights for homosexuals in any part of society one of the primary activities.

Of course there is nothing technically wrong with being a soulless politician or a fundamentalist letting your religious beliefs influence how you handle a position of authority.

But it seems like the people without one of these clear biases are OK (if not elated) with the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

I said "knowledge of" homosexuals, Finn. Homosexuals are already in the military, so asking people for their feelings on knowing about the situation they are already in, is pointless.

What I've never understood about the resistance on this is that if homosexuals add sexual tension to a unit, then wouldn't those people who feel the most uncomfortable have a greater amount of tension when they did not know who was homosexual in their unit? Why would tension increase with situational awareness?

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And the serving combat soldiers and marines, are they all souless politicians or fundamentalist Christians, or are they all just brainless bigots?

Don't ask; don't tell permitted homosexuals to serve in the military if they adapted to military life and didn't make an issue of their sexuality in doing so.

What will repeal accomplish in addition?

Will we see the creation of "Gay Associations" in military units bent on making military culture more acceptable to their organized advocates? I expect we will.

Will all this make for a better Marine Battalion or Fighter Squadron? I don't think so.

So, you decided what gays in the miltary and especially those who might be on the front lines want?

Have they been heard on this issue, and if so how?

As for the tension, you'll have to ask the people who experience it or are concerned they will.

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

As for the tension, you'll have to ask the people who experience it or are concerned they will.

Don't get me wrong, I think there are some people who experience anxiety about homosexuals, and that many are in the military. I don't however grant them some special exception. Who or what someone else is, is not excuse for your own actions, nor is it an excuse for inability to do your job. service men and women overcome great diversity to work together all the time. I don't believe for one second that this is any larger than the challenges they deal with daily. In fact, it's pretty trivial.

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personally don't oppose the repeal, but I'm tired of all the overly simplistic blather about how this is exactly like the segragation of blacks in the military. It is not. A Don't Ask Don't Tell policy regarding blacks is unimaginable. I'm also disgusted by the insistence by so many of demonizing the opponents of the repeal....even after it won the day.

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personally don't oppose the repeal, but I'm tired of all the overly simplistic blather about how this is exactly like the segragation of blacks in the military. It is not. A Don't Ask Don't Tell policy regarding blacks is unimaginable. I'm also disgusted by the insistence by so many of demonizing the opponents of the repeal....even after it won the day.

My my because you could not paint black men white and tell them not to reveal that they are black that somehow made this nonsense in any real manner difference from what the military did to our black citizens until sixty years ago?

The same damn nonsense was issue at the time as to why oh why we could not grant black men the right of to serve on equal footing as is now being express so freely concerning homosexuals.

In both cases the arguments as far as I am concern was driven by bigots trying to justify them being bigots.

know Bill. You've made this point repeatedly.

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Don't ask; don't tell permitted homosexuals to serve in the military if they adapted to military life and didn't make an issue of their sexuality in doing so.

This would be a more compelling argument, if not for the fact that there have been many who were booted out who weren't, in fact, 'making an issue' of their sexuality. Instead, somebody found out about it and turned them in, which lead to their subsuquent expulsion. What you describe doesn't match the reality of the situation.

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Will we see the creation of "Gay Associations" in military units bent on making military culture more acceptable to their organized advocates? I expect we will.

Oh, for Christ' sake. These people are ALREADY in the military. They just want to fit in, not to make themselves increasingly different from everyone else.

Cycloptichorn

As I noted above, many don't really want to fit in - they instead want to alter the character of the unit they supposedly serve. An unwillingness to "fit in" was in my long experience the central reason for all administrative discharges from the military, those associated with homosexuality and all others as well.

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know Bill. You've made this point repeatedly.

And as long as we have posters on this thread trying to justify being bigots with the same set of arguments that was used toward our black citizens I will keep making that point.

And I'm sure someone will give you a Gold Star for your heroic efforts.

It may very well be the right decision to risk tension on the battlefield

As I noted above, many don't really want to fit in - they instead want to alter the character of the unit they supposedly serve. An unwillingness to "fit in" was in my long experience the central reason for all administrative discharges from the military,

Americans aren't that different from other humans.

There are about 30 countries in the world, including nearly all of the NATO members, as well as South Africa, Brazil and the Philippines, that allow gay and lesbian servicemen and women in the military, according to Aaron Belkin, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“In just about all of these countries there is research and anecdotal evidence that illustrates there is no problem, no decrease in cohesion among units, nor a diminishing effectiveness of the troops,” said Belkin, an expert in the area of civil-military relations whose research has been published in the military publications "International Security" and "Armed Forces and Society."

In 2000, Belkin co-authored an exhaustive 44-page study on Canada, which, after a series of lawsuits in 1991, changed its policies to allow gays to openly serve in the military. Belkin’s study, which at the time was regarded as the most comprehensive academic study of homosexuality in a foreign military ever completed, concluded that the change in policy had “not led to any change in military performance, unit cohesion, or discipline.”