Bush must think that serving in the US Military is a special right.

Great Debates
1

Syllogism ahead:
2nd Presidential Debate, 2000

I’ll break down the facts:

  1. Gays can serve as long as no one knows they’re gay.
  2. Gays can’t serve if they’re known to be gay.
  3. If a gay person is serving and becomes known to be gay, they may no longer serve.
  4. Eligibility to serve is based, in this case, on a person’s sexuality (straight).
  5. Ineligibility to serve is based, in this case, on a person’s sexuality (gay).
  6. Bush is then saying that if a person may serve regardless of sexuality would be creating or repealing current laws.
  7. Creating or repealing current laws for people based on their sexuality would be a “special right”.
  8. Therefore, repealing or creating a law/laws allowing for gays to serve openly in the military would be creating a special right.

(Of course, a similar syllogism based on the same facts could determine that Bush would say that being out of the closet would be the “special right”).

So, are there any flaws in either of these proposals?

2

Are you ***sure ***that Kerry wants to repeal DADT?

I’d be very, very surprised.

3

Please John… don’t ask… :slight_smile:

I got this from the johnkerry site:

“Speaking Out Against the Clinton Administration Ban on Gays in the Military: John Kerry opposed the Clinton administration’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and was one of a few senators to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee against the policy.”

Naturally he didn’t promise anything… just mentioned it…

4

Well, Sen. John Kerry supported lifting the ban outright in 1993.
and

and from Kerry’s website:

5

The military brass hate the idea of gays in the military. Whoever is elected will need the full and eager cooperation of the army leadership as the war on terror and the war in Iraq will be the two largest issues they’ll have to deal with. I doubt either candidate will risk alienating anybody over DADT, regardless of what their rhetoric is during the campaign.

6

If I were a soldier I certainly woudn’t want to know if my bunk mate is gay… so I can understand the DADT mentality… but overall its like putting a band aid on a bullet wound. It doesn’t help and it only covers up the problem.

I doubt politically if its possible to take it down though...
7

It’s interesting that the Kerry web site speaks about his stance on DADT only in the past tense. Is there actually a site anywhere that says Kerry promises to eliminate that policy? I did some googling and came up dry.

8

What bullet wound? Gay’s in the military are not an operational problem. A Californian study of the Australian military after gays and lesbians were permitted to serve (1993) found no decline in military performance. Recruitment and retention rates for military staff have not deteriorated.

The United Kingdom, Canada and Israel also allow sexual minorities to serve. Clearly servicemen have gotten used to the idea.

9

I am happy that countries with an open mentality and more respect for gays were able to include gays in the military… the problem is americans are way more prudish and conservative.

10

… to be fair Latin Americans too have a problem with gays serving. You get exempt from military service in Brazil if you say your gay.

11

I like how we know we can train recruits to sleep in trenchs, shoot people and drop bombs on cities, but we’re afraid that being exposed to gay people will somehow blow their minds. I imagine that if whites and blacks were able to deal with their issues and fight the Korean War at the same time, then sexual preference probably won’t bring the US army to its knees.

That said, I still don’t think that now is the time or place. US military commaders disliked Clinton for trying to impose DADT in the first place. Kerry doesn’t need the military getting all snarky when their is a war to be fought.

12

Perhaps, but with looming personnell shortages and given the context of the war on terrorism, those objections might start to seem rather petty.

I wonder if you can get a pink ribbon that says, “Support all the troops”.

13

I’ve heard that the current stop-loss programs make specific exemptions so that they don’t keep gays from being expelled. Apparently the current need for troops has not lessend the armies zeal for keeping gays out.

No cite as I can’t remember where I heard this, anyone else heard something similar?

14

It seems to me that in wartime homosexuals would be aggressively preferred for frontline (i.e. dangerous) roles as their deaths would not affect the general population as much as heterosexuals who would not survive to breed. However, in peacetime, it is better to recruit heteros as they will pass on what you teach them to their children (you hope).

15

I hope this pun was intentional.

16

I couldn’t care less if my officemate was gay or not; why should the situation be different if we were soldiers in a war?

As long as everyone behaves in a professional manner – and by that, I mean no fraternizing, come-ons, and other such nonsense – I can’t think of a reasonable argument against allowing openly-homosexual folks serve in the military.

If the Armed Services can take ordinary men and women and turn them into lethal killing machines, teaching them to act like mature adults should be easy-peasy by comparison.

17

Quartz:

That did cross my mind for a sec. Operation Get-Behind-the-Flamers. :wink:

18

Let’s back up a little–since when did military service become a “right”? AFAIK, it isn’t and never has been. The military isn’t bound by the same employment laws civilian companies are.

19

About gays in the military, I humbly submit my opinion… From the perspective of a former grunt, there are three problems that I see.

  1. It is illegal. Bush is right about that. I don’t agree that changing a demonstrably biased law is actually creating a special right, as the same thing had to be done for black soldiers and women, but c’est la vie.

According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) it is illegal to be gay / lesbian / bisexual whilst serving in the military on active duty. Don’t ask don’t tell was a compromise forced on the Joint Chiefs during Clinton’s first term that would not result in a change in the UCMJ. I was there in the AF then, and nobody in the forces, gay or straight, liked it.

The gay folks rightly hated it because DADT was a pussy half-assed gesture that was almost immediately ignored and lots of gay folks misunderstood that it meant “it’s OK to be gay” when in fact it meant “If you ever show us you’re gay we’re gonna spank you for it”. DADT resulted in a hell of a lot of discharges under less-than-honorable conditions in the 90’s. It was also bullshit, because in the rampant homophobia of the US military when I was there, being gay was not quite a death sentence but was definitely a sure-fire way to get your ass beat on a regular basis by your fellow soldiers.

The straight folks didn’t like it, because now there was this possibility that you couldn’t confirm or deny that the guy or girl sharing the shower / trench / foxhole / tank / aircraft / missile silo / aircraft bunker with you was a fruitcake and couldn’t be trusted when you slept to not molest you (us straight folks all of 19 being so tolerant and sensible and all). After all, what our bunkmates told us must be true, right? And the jokes our officers told from time to time must be true, right?

  1. It will require changing a very real and very steadfast social and cultural system within the military to allow gays to serve openly, unless the military has become hugely more open and tolerant since I left active duty in 1994 and the Guard in 1998. I don’t really think this has happened.

So if you want to change it, some pussy-assed thing like DADT is less than useless, it’s merely a political sop to a particular constituency, and everyone in the military knew that at all ranks. You have to order the change to happen, from the top, and pound it down through the ranks, just like the integration of African Americans and women, and the forced removal of drug use in all ranks of the military. If it’s ever gonna happen, it’s gonna be tough, bloody, and a lot of chaff and even some wheat will have to be dumped by the wayside in the pursuit of progress.

For my 2p, neither Kerry nor Bush is ever gonna have that much guts to stick this through, and to be honest, I think homosexuals in the military are enough of a minority that the most that will ever happen will be forced legal tolerance, but not acceptance. It’s not a big enough issue, like blacks (some 40% of the military overall), women (30%), or drug use (which was such a rampant problem that officers wouldn’t go into enlisted barracks in the 70s or 80s without sidearms and armed guards on base). It just doesn’t have that much heat attached to it as an issue.

  1. Getting a bunch of trained killers to act nice and supportive of someone’s sexual identity is not so easy as it seems, and sometimes runs contrary to being trained killers at all. Face it, 19 year olds, overseas, “killing people and dropping bombs on cities,” don’t give a rat fuck about being politically correct, and to be perfectly honest, I kinda like it that way. I don’t want them nice - I want them so damn mean that they can all come home alive, after doing their job. Sensitivity training and small arms combat don’t work together.

BTW - before anoyone starts baying for my blood as a homophobe, I am just doing my best to tell it like it is. I have changed in my mindset dramatically since my time in the military, and don’t feel the same way I did then - I now know, without a doubt, that there is no real reason why homosexuals could not (and have not, for that matter) served with honor, distinction, and heroism, as well as I know for a fact that at least two of the guys and one of the girls I served with were homosexuals and did their jobs just fine when I knew them but got booted out later for being gay. But I do remember how I felt, and would be remiss to not be honest about how others in my situation felt.

20

Actually… a bit of sensitivity training would have saved american lives in Iraq… once they became "peace"keeping troops. Welcome to a new world were gung-ho soldiers aren’t that useful after “mission accomplished”…

I agree with what you said otherwise… and its sad that so much fuss is made over who soldiers sleep with.