Listen, we do not ask soldiers what they want to do. It is an army, not a freakin’ democracy. I do not care what any soldier thinks about the law. If and when the law changes, we will implement it. I do not care about the political opinions of anyone in uniform.
Yah, this thing is an odd beast, isn’t it? Almost reads a bit like a push-poll - designed to nudge opinions by presenting servicemembers with scenarios likely to generate a negative response, rather than just measure opinions honestly.
The formulation of the questions is a bit strange in another way, too - it doesn’t ask (for the most part) how people feel, but what they would do in a given situation (i.e., sharing a shower with a gay servicemember). The thing is that, as Paul pointed out - isn’t there only one correct answer to that? “I would do as instructed by my commanding officer or NCO.”
And some of these questions, I don’t even see the point of them. Example:
Frankly, who cares? I’m not in the military, but I certainly wouldn’t want bigots coming to my parties. If repealing DADT means fewer assholes showing up to free food/movies/whatever, I would assume that just means more snacks and better seats for me. Why is this even worth asking?
ETA: To answer the OP, it appears that a company called Westat came up with this - they’re listed as the contact on that survey. Website is here: http://www.westat.com/
Four freaking million dollars to collect information that no reasonable soldier would even want to know? Can we do anything at all for a lousy million dollars?
Didn’t they do the same thing in 1947, "If a n****r wanted to shower at the same time you did in the same facility what would you do:
Allow the boy to shower in peace
Ask kindly that he wait until after I was done
Remind him to go to the back of the facility
Stare at his enormous dong."
Hmmm. I wonder what a similar poll about African Americans in the armed forces would have yielded prior to integration? The fact is when DADT is repealed, which will happen, either shortly or a little later, there will be a group of people who will freak out initially and then everyone will get over it. The fact is, service members are serving with homosexuals right now. The only difference in the future will be explicit knowledge (if they want it known ) of who those people are.
I have to say, I bet a good number of my former soldiers thought I was gay (I’m not) simply because I never shied away from letting them know (if asked) that I supported gay marriage and repealing DADT.
I don’t care what the topic under debate is. This is a stupid, stupid thing to say. You realize that it’s a volunteer Army, right? And that servicemembers can choose to not reenlist if they don’t want to?
If you’re trying to make a decision, how can you possibly think it’s a bad idea to ask those that would know best?
“I wonder how a change to A would affect the military.”
“Maybe we should ask them.”
“Poppycock! They’ll do as I say!”
“Sure, but…”
“I said ‘poppycock’!”
I don’t know if it makes sense to coddle bigotry in the military because it ight make them militariliy ineffective (and i don’t think anyone believes this) but I have some Marine buddies (a pretty macho crowd) and they don’t seem to give a crap if the marine is gay as long as they are marines… I think the exact words were, “better a gay marine than some army fag” (and I don’t think they were implying that the guy from the army was actually gay).
No, it’s not a stupid thing to say. At all. The Army is and always has been (and always will be) STRICTLY under civilian control. The personal feelings of troops on ANY issue are entirely–ENTIRELY–irrelevant, and often detrimentally distracting. “They’ll do as I say!” is an altogether fitting and proper mindset for civilian government to adopt, because the military is NOT a democracy. Democratic ideals within the military, in fact, are actually counterproductive to military functioning. The only time a service member’s feelings or beliefs can EVER legally come into play is if s/he is ordered to violate the Geneva or Hague Conventions or to circumvene RsOE or established principles of human rights.
I say this as a former soldier. Army Infantry, in fact. I joined in '92, right when Clinton took office and the initial controversy over gays in the military flared up. (To which DADT was the very poor compromise.)
At the time, I really thought that they ought to take the opinions of us service members into consideration. How could they justifiably force a policy upon us without so much as asking about our feelings and responses? After only a short while in uniform, I learned that not only does the military not work that way, it SHOULDN’T work that way. Engaging troops in this way on an inflammatory issue would in short order lead to a breakdown in discipline, cohesion, and morale, which are absolutely VITAL to the effective functioning of any military.
Besides, as several posters have pointed out, why would troops’ opinions have mattered during the period of racial integration, and why should they matter, now?
The opinions of those in uniforms is completely irrelevant. The military is not a democracy. I was clearly informed of that on the day I took the oath of enlistment, and sure enough, Ronald Reagan never once solicited my opinion about military policy. The opinions of the troops don’t mean shit and aren’t worth shit. They will do what their Commander in Chief tells them to do, as he was ELECTED to do, they will do it without complaint and that will be the end of it. The military has a right wing, religious culture to it, largely because of the self-selection in enlistment, and their backwards attitudes reflect that, but it doesn’t matter because it’s not their job to have opinions about showering with homos. It’s their job to do what they’re told, when they’re told, end of story.
I would imagine that they are worried that it might affect bonding and camradery in the army - if men are put in a situation where they feel uncomfortable, then they might stop going.
If the homophobes can’t handle it, then they need to leave the military. The military is not going to pander to bigots. Bigots will either adjust or leave.
Given that they have made the decision to have such a poll, I actually like how its arranged. If it’s a push poll, it seems to me to be pushing in the direction of homosexual tolerance.
The first part of the poll asks about whether your unit is competent. To which I expect the general response is “Yeah we’re competent”
The next part asks whether a unit that you were in that had a homosexual was competent, to which the response would be “Well, Frank was pretty Faggy, but that unit was still competent. One homo’s not going to make a difference.”
Next you finally get to the part that asks about the hot button issues that are at the heart of the criticism of gays in the military (eww showering with teh gay). His only options in this section are to A) suck up and deal with it like a professional, or B) Go ask someone for help, or C) other/I don’t know. By this time the soldier is still thinking about how competent and professional he is and so he will probably tend towards A. Further option B would make him look like a wuss who needs to run for help, and you can’t really write “Beat him up and give him a swirly” under other in the C category even if that what you would do, so you end up responding that gays won’t really affect you.
Now of course bigots are just going to answer all the questions negatively across the board, to try to make the poll look bad, but those answers can be picked out fairly easily as outliers when analyzing the results.
What would you say if white Southern soldiers (where a lot of our best soldiers come from) felt uncomfortable around blacks and had trouble bonding with them.
The transformation coming soon to the US military is no small undertaking. It behooves the brass to understand what reaction they might encounter in their ranks when the DADT policy is terminated. That is to be prepared with a response to any negative outcomes.
It’s important to understand how things will affect morale and function of personnel, not because you’re soliciting their opinion, but because you should know what sort of trouble to look for and be ready to handle.
The military (and the government in general) tends to like to have as much information as possible anytime they’re looking at a policy change.
The outrage is stupid and this polling is a non issue.
For that matter segregated towns that surrounded army bases. Orders to either allow black soldiers to eat in restaurants and attend movies in the town where their base were located met with hellacious resistance and screams of the town’s rights being violated until they were told “alright then, we’ll just close or severely downsize the base, then the diner and movie theater and laundromat can serve or not serve whatever 4 people left they want or don’t want to”. This was seen as arm-twisting at the time, but imo it was as important a step in ending segregation as Rosa Parks, a sort of “Domino effect” to, uh, coin a term about a 60s event.
OK, retards, so what would you do if Reagan/Clinton told you to take a survey? Would you tell him to shove off, because your opinion doesn’t matter? Or would you do your duty and take the survey? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
You’re saying “Who cares what the military thinks?” when it’s painfully obvious that THE CIVILIAN GOVERNMENT DOES. The fact that you two glue sniffers can’t see that is an impressive display of stupidity.
Why is this even worth asking?