DADT will become law soon, passed this week by the lame duck Democratic Senate after earlier passage by the House. I oppose this law for all the usual reasons.
Like the gay rights movement as a whole, this is part of a broader cultural movement: destruction of the military and other traditional institutions in the name of equality. Their prerogatives, culture, ethos, and the human type the military allowed to flourish have become intolerable in a society dedicated to an “equality” that allows no distinctions of right and wrong, man and women, or anything else. The post-Vietnam denegration of the military began the process, which was accelerated by the Tailhook Scandal. In an hysterical overreaction, women were forcibly integrated into units in which few had any interest and in which the units had hitherto flourished as all male domains. Standards were lowered. Less time was spent at the rifle range and more and more on endless lectures on diversity and sexual harassment.
The worst fruit of this process has been habitual dishonesty at every level of command. Ignoring the facts and speaking the party line is now so ingrained, that no one with an interest in a military career dares note the farcical lack of physical ability among many women “warriors,” nor the lack of patriotism by certain diversity candidates, some of whom have a bad habit of shooting up their peers in the name of Allah.
As in the integration of women into combat units, the end of DADT will change the military more than it will demand any changes of the gays who now have the right to serve “openly.” On what basis will a lack of hand-holding, male-male kissing, domestic partner benefits, a lisp, sex change operations, and God knows what else be justified? Gays are allowed to serve now–let us not forget–they simply must keep that controversial part of their lives to themselves. In other words, discretion and respect for public standards is required. No more. And there is no basis now to recognize that the secondary and tertiary behaviors described above are disruptive of military order. Nor does anyone seem to care that this behavior is offensive to a great many of the people who actually want to serve in the military, conservative and religious people from the Red States, people completely unknown to the Pelosis and Obamas of the world, and people who will quietly resign and leave the military, just as many quality men have defected from certain combat support units because of the disruptive presence and double standards required to have women integrated in the ranks. Oh well, no price too high for diversity, not even lost wars and homicidal Army majors apparently!
The DADT repeal has nothing to do with the good of the military, winning wars, or genuine concern for justice. It is a big fat middle finger to an institution the left habitually despises and has since the Vietnam War.
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Over at Larry Auster’s site they are having a similar discussion on DADT. A user, Max P, posted a comment in which he compared allowing gays to come out of the closet and serve with allowing racists and bigots to do the same. I won’t post that comment here, but you can read it if you wish.
I wish more people understood the degree to which leftism uses designated minority groups as pawns in its struggle to overturn tradition.
Clearly, there are leftists who have good faith reasons for supporting gay rights, including having gay friends and family members whom they care for. But I think that a lot of leftists who honestly believe that their sympathy for gays–or blacks, or illegal immigrants, or Muslims, etc…–is in good faith are unaware of their subconscious motivations.
I see this more in the younger generation. I am in law school and, at 31, am one of the oldest in my class. I have some weird credibility in the eyes of some of my classmates by virtue of being one of the few out homosexuals in the class. I think part of it is because they were raised in a popular culture that lionizes gays as a fascinating and noble-for-having-suffered group of people, so they expect me to deliver on these unrealistic expectations they have, which is unfortunate because I’m just not that fascinating or noble a person, nor do I feel all that oppressed. But I think part of it also is that I *represent*, namely the freedom from social conventions that popular culture teaches them are suffocating and serve no purpose. Obviously, these two sentiments are not mutually exclusive.
Having said that, I don’t get this feeling from the overwhelming majority of my classmates. But I do get it from some, and certainly from more than I did being the only out homosexual in my high school 15 years ago.
Compared to letting women in the military, this is not going to be nearly as big a problem. The fact is, you just don’t have that many gay men who want military careers. Yes, there are a few. As with any group there are exceptions, but we’re talking a very small subset of a small subset of our general population.
The bigger impact will be on the female side, where lesbians are more inclined to military service than their straight counterparts. This will probably depress straight female retention and recruitment, and that will probably even help reliability numbers, since lesbians are far less likely to get knocked up.
I’m not saying there won’t be problems. There will be barracks friction, and the straights will more often than not be on the losing side of that equation for PC reasons, but in the longer run these will be rather small potatoes compared to the issues created by the gender-norming process that has been in play since the late 70s and early 80s.
I agree that integrating women into the forces is a bigger problem, but the repeal of DADT is psychologically another reminder that this ain’t the US anymore.
For those interested on the benefits of coed training, read this by Colonel David Hackworth. It is about ten years old, but probably still depicts the chaos of bringing women in large numbers into the forces.
[...] written before what this portends: the military will be forced further into the same kind of straightjacket of [...]