I don’t believe an illegal act can be called a ‘disciplinary action’. And frankly there are plenty of other mudrers done by service men and women for even more idiotic reasons (from beating a wife to death because her swimsuit was too small, to killing a ‘shipmate’ (actually it was a soilder) for ‘stealing’ his boot polish).
The only story I can find (in a very fast search) was one of the death of PFC Winchell in 1999. That was 7 years ago, how many homosexuals have been killed in the ‘real world’ in the last 7 years? How many other hate crimes have occured? How many stupid murders?
The military is no more perfect than the outside world, but I would also argue it is no more homophobic (and frankly takes orders about integreation MUCH better, as can be seen from crime stats from the Military vs. Civilian during civil rights).
The policy is stupid, period; that does not change the fact that you can NOT have a diciplinary action against a supsected homosexual. You have to ‘prove’ it first, and not by asking them.
From what I’ve heard from my Parents, Both Navy Veterans, that’s true. They’ve mentioned serving with several people who they were fairly sure were homosexual, but nothing ever happened to them.
I’m not so sure about the first part of this statement.
In the Navy, while I was in, combat vessels were all male crews. After 40 days without being able to go ashore - that is 40 days where women were reduced to mythical beings that existed only in memory or movies - there’s a lot of odd sexual pressures building up. This is a situation that doesn’t have a parallel, I don’t think, in civilian life.
There were a lot of homo-erotic jokes and behaviors going on, specifically to hold such thoughts and drives at bay. If someone were percieved to be taking those sorts of things seriously, I can see where it could lead to some bad repurcussions.
Having said that, it doesn’t change my belief that the change can be made and enforced. And should be made. Certainly with the move to include female crew on larger ships some of that pressure will go down, I believe.
Sorry, Guinastasia, I missed your question until now. The general understanding we got from him was that dirt was holy. The problem was that this guy was one of the ones that typifies the stereotype about Nucs: All brains and no common sense. Then again, this is the same guy who cursed one of the Turbine generators. (To no effect.) Most of us just assumed he wasn’t playing with a full duck.
(Why he felt a need to curse the turbine generator was another unanswerable question. Hell, we were already using chicken bones to keep ‘Mr. Happy’ from scramming the plant. Shouldn’t that have been enough magic?)
Well, they can start investigating you until they dig up proof that you slept with a non-approved gender at some point in your life, or at least expressed an interest in doing so, and then drum you out for that reason. My (citeless) understanding is that this sort of thing has increased dramatically since the institution of DADT.
Maybe I’m naive about these things, but if the problem is homosexual desires being sublimited as homoerotic jokes and unspecified “behaviors”, wouldn’t a little actual sex relieve the tension? Bottled up sexual tension doesn’t sound good for morale.
It is frowned upon (though not outright forbidden) to have sex with someone in your unit (causes tension amoung others), and if you are in a chain of command kind of situation it IS forbidden. On a ship almost everyone is in a ‘chain of command’ situation (not too many of the same rate/rank on a ship); and in such close quarters I’m pretty sure sex would be a taboo thing (hetero as well as homosexual). I know on ships large enough to have females (actually I believe MOST ships can have females now) the Males are not allowed in the Female berthing areas and vice versa, so there would be little chance for such things to happen (in any ‘legit’ manner).
Walloon, I agree - but Congresscritters hate the very idea of navy seamen having sex while at sea. (One reason that women weren’t allowed on combatant vessels for so long. Brilliant idea: to keep 'em safe we’ll put them on the one ship after the carrier that’s the most tempting target in any battlegroup. :rolleyes: ) Seriously, that need for sexual release is one reason that sailors have such a horrid reputation when they do get liberty ports. And Congress keeps trying to raise the limit on long-term sea deoployments to eight months or longer. sigh
Likewise, while I tend to believe that most humans are bisexual to one degree or another, it was not a popular theory while I was in. And I could easily imagine social costs to anyone who’d been found to have had sexual relations with another man. (Whether there were official costs from the chain of command.)
This is the exact opposite of my understanding. From the folks I’ve spoken to – including some who investigate and prosecute such activities, and one person who was homosexual and active duty – the military doesn’t press investigations into the matter. They take the “Don’t Ask” part of their obligation very seriously. A member of the military pretty much has to send up flares and wave flags, and a ready-made case has to fall into someone’s lap for the military to prosecute the matter.
You expect me to be able to explain the reasoning, or lack thereof, that Congresscritters use?
Seriously, I think there’s some kind of meme in Congress that if men and women serve together they’ll spend all their time having sex. Which makes me wonder just what’s going on in Congress.
The thing that really gets me is the idea that keeping men out of women’s berthing complexes and vice versa is actually going to prevent copulation/fornication/fraternization. Anyone who thinks that way has never seen a coffin locker/rack. There’s barely room to roll over, how the heck can you make the beast with two backs there?
If there’s going to be sex onboard Navy ships it’s going to be in storage rooms, dead spaces, or offices after normal working hours. And maybe officer staterooms.
Might I humbly suggest that their reasoning has more to do with the fact that they’re dealing with 18-24 year olds in close, confined quarters? And that they’re thinking about jealousy, in-fighting, emotional outbursts, and the difficulties associated with pregnant soldiers fighting battles?
Just because Congress thinks something doesn’t automatically make it wrong.
First, we might want to xfer this discussion to a new topic, since it has damned little to do with ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Secondly - to respond to your points in somewhat reverse order.
Pregnancy is something of a non-issue IMHO. In part, because deployments aren’t long enough for a pregnancy, contracted during the deployment, to end up being debilitating in the normal course of things. More importantly - pregnancy is going to be an issue with women in the service no matter what their service may entail specifically. You can’t restrict their service to some duties and not others just because they can become pregnant.
Now, I believe that there are several differing precedents about how the military can restrict a woman’s choice to become pregnant, and they’re all over the place. In some cases, the military has been upheld to be able to forbid a servicemember from getting pregnant, in others it has been told it can’t.
That has nothing to do, however, to my mind with whether women should be allowed to serve on combatant vessels. Since the same issues come up when they serve on the non-combatant supply and service vessels associated with the fleets. What I mean is why does putting men and women together on a CVN suddenly make for sexual tensions and problems that don’t seem to be a concern when men and women serve on an AOE, AS, AR or AD? Either it’s an issue all the time, or it’s a made up issue. You, and Congress, can’t have it both ways. (I grant the support ships I just mentioned are now out of the fleet proper, but they used to be there, and had plenty of female crew.)
And, please note, I’m not advocating women serving in front line infantry units - there are issues there that aren’t a factor with modern naval vessels, such as hygiene and the importance of upper body strength. I’d like to see such positions opened to women, with the understanding that they’d have to meet the same physical fitness requirements as men (at least for capability - I’m not worried about % bodyfat) in the same positions. But that’s not what I’ve been talking about.
I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t see the problems that the other things you’d mentioned could have on unit effectiveness. However you can get most of those without sex being an issue. Race, education, economic class, regional background can all lead to similar problems. And, frankly, as others have said the military does pretty well over all making it clear what is and is not acceptable behavior.