Yes, but there weren’t many samurai in the Persian army either.
You needn’t go ancient or leave America to find an out gay soldier of significance. One of the best thing that happened to Washington’s army was “Baron” Friedrich von Steuben. He taught the troops to use bayonets, to arrange the camp more hygienically (this may sound almost frivolous, but it wasn’t- the camp arrangement was responsible for many deaths due to polluted water and disease transmission and sewage), Prussian discipline, faster reloading techniques, and many other things that were compiled into a textbook that was still used at West Point a century later.
Von Steuben (who was neither a baron nor a general in Europe though he was introduced as both to Washington) had had left the Prussian army and then Europe due to disgrace over homosexual affairs. When he died in New York a few years after the Constitution was signed he left most of his estate to his companion General Benjamin Walker.
How gay was von Steuben, you ask? Judge for yourself- here’s his monument in the park across from the White House.
He’s seen things those people wouldn’t believe.
Yeah, 300 has nothing on that in the homoeroticism department.
Sure.
But when you rant in the Pit, you invite comments. Otherwise, post your rant to your Facey-spacey page and turn off comments.
And I, too, have two uncles that served in WWII, one in Europe and one in the Pacific. The one in Europe did not come home, so I never met him; he died in a tank outside the German village of Themar on April 7, 1945, fifteen-ish years before I was born.
The other one did make it home, suffering no wound other than an attack of a coconut crab on some South Pacific island, although he heard bullets pass by close enough to give him a strong interest in sand more than once. And he was, at least later in life, an ardent opponent of the introduction of gays into the military, writing more than one letter to then-President Clinton urging his opposition to the DADT policy.
But…plural of anecdote is not data, right?
There are no homosexuals in foxholes!
But there are male foxes in self denial who go into foxholes.
That is correct.
And if your uncle is still with us, please extend to him my thanks for his service.
Sadly, he passed away about fifteen years ago. But - thanks much for the thought.
So, on one hand, we have t-bonham’s two uncles, who say soldiers fifty years ago didn’t really have a big problem with gays. On the other hand, we have the Senator and your uncle, as evidence that soldiers fifty years ago did have a problem with gays. Give an equal number of datapoints on either side of the debate, it’s clear that the only conclusion one can come to is…
Of course soldiers fifty years ago would have had a problem with serving with gays! The idea that any random cross section of the American public in nineteen hundred and forty-fucking-five would have had a generally tolerant attitude towards open homosexuals in any capacity is absurd on its face.
Gay is no big deal now days, the shock effect, if ever there really was one wore off years ago.
Soldiers in action are just soldiers and couldn’t care less if a bloke knits lampshades in his spare time let alone his sexuality.
A persons life depends on his squad mates, literally, so you aren’t going to piss off any if you can help it.
Because they might be the one that saves your life.
I think it’s common knowledge that many people who are not homosexually inclined will still resort to homosexuality, if they are stuck for long periods in single-sex environments with little or no access to the opposite sex – boarding schools, prisons, monasteries/convents, labor camps, ships at sea – and armies in the field. Any place where you might get horny, and tired of your own hand.
I suspect that’s what the brass is really worried about – that sort of thing happening, and being bad for discipline and [snicker] unit cohesion – and that is why the UCMJ has always defined gay sex as a crime, and why it remains one; as I understand it, DADT applies only to orientation, not to one’s actual sexual behavior while in uniform. Sure, it still happens, but it’s (arguably) not quite so bad for discipline if it’s all strictly on the downlow.
Not always – only since 1942.
Holy crap! Have you seen those fuckers? That’s no laughing matter!
In all seriousness*, Bricker, your uncle sounds like a stand up guy.
*Except I am totally serious about the coconut crabs. Those things are really scary.