f*ggots in uniform: not cool

[El Nino]

So, the U.S. Senate recently voted to repeal the controversial "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy banning openly homosexual persons from serving in the military. The policy allowed for people with homosexual orientation to serve, as long as their orientation was never made known. However, in cases where it was exposed (sometimes by accident), that person could be discharged.

Realistically, removing DADT isn't necessarily going to change openness in the military. A lot of servicemen and women are still going to keep it a secret because getting your *** kicked is no fun. But repealing DADT does allow for other policy changes such as allowing for someone's partner of the same gender to be eligible for survivor benefits.

Of course, this will all take time to be implemented. The legislation repealing DADT doesn't have any set timeframe; it is at the discretion of the U.S. military. But you'll know when it happens by looking out for the Nazis riding dinosaurs and the storm of hellfire raining down from the angry heavens.

Because that's what happens when gay people get rights.

One argument against the repeal (perhaps the chief argument) is that allowing for openness in the military is a distraction, and a potentially dangeorus one. "If a gay man can shower with other men, why can't men shower with women?"

Well, if you want to answer that question, ask yourself exactly why straight men can't shower with women. More on this later.

Currently, there exists no method for finding out who is gay and who isn't, and the "Don't Ask" portion of DADT means that recruiters can't ask a potential recruit his/her orientation. Meaning, homosexuals have already infiltrated the military and are already getting naked around members of their own gender. Signing up to join the military is like asking to get ***** at this point, amirite?

Or, wait, no, DADT is what protects straight soldiers from getting *****. Of course, that's it. DADT is what keeps gays in their place, or else they'd be rapin' ev'rybody out here.

Well, the fact of the matter is, sexual harassment is a reality. It does occur in the workplace, and the military is no exception. Reported cases of harassment include female on female, female on male, male on male, and male on female. The question is, is one form of harassment more acceptable than another? That is unlikely. The problem with sexual harassment is that it is sexual harassment, not that it is male on female harassment or male on male harassment. Either form is disruptive.

So, does DADT deter harassment? Well, women currently serve in the U.S. military alongside men, except in combat positions. There is no DADT equivalent to "protect" women or men from being harassed by a member of the opposite gender. Harassment does occur, but it is not the norm. A lot of the time, men and women can serve with each other without harassing each other sexually. What prevents the harassment from taking place since there is no straight equivalent to DADT? Probably the same code of conduct that guides most pro-social behavior. If straight people don't need a rule like DADT to NOT sexually harass each other, then we'd need to find something special about homosexuals to suggest that this group absolutely needs DADT in place or else everyone gets buggered.

And that special something is the group shower, the shared locker room, the shared restroom. The argument goes, "I am a straight man, and I would not be able to keep it in my pants if I were surrounded by naked women, so I don't see how a gay guy could control himself either when surrounded by naked men."

And this goes back to the question of why straight men can't control themselves around naked women, and how gay men and lesbian women are different from their straight counterparts in this respect.

Straight men have never had to learn that level of self-control. This is because society works hard to keep the genders separated, so they don't have to worry about it. Women have their own locker room; men have their own locker room. No self-control needed. So when most guys try to picture themselves in that situation of showering with a bunch of women, their eyes glaze over. Impossible, right? How could a gay guy or a lesbian woman handle it any differently?

Gays and lesbians do handle it differently. They have do. Society doesn't help them with separation. So they have to learn their own form of self-control. One of the most common stories about self-realization in the LGBT community involves being an awkward teen and being in the locker room. For a lot of people, that's the first time they realized what they were. But they keep it in their pants. The motivating factor for that involves numbers. As an LGBT person, you are the minority; you are almost always outnumbered. What this means is that the person who is the most at risk in the locker room is actually the gay guy or the lesbian woman. They are in the position where they have a high chance of being found out, and the consequences of being found out are not pleasant.

This is one experience from adolescence that you'll find in the LGBT community but you won't find in the straight community. It's a learning experience. People learn to conceal their attraction out of necessity. Even in a society that accepts homosexuality, the locker room isn't necessarily the place to be exploring that. And even in a society that accepts homosexuality, as an LGBT person, you will be required to conceal your attraction more often than a straight person will be required to.

From that experience, a gay man or a lesbian woman becomes conditioned to control themselves. They are not allowed to "give in", or to be as open about it, regardless of society's level of tolerance. Because of that conditioning, a lot of them can handle being around members of their own gender without showing signs of attraction. It is a form of social adaptation that some LGBT persons have and most straight persons don't.

Conclusion: I might be wrong, and in that case we will all burn when the apocalypse hits. Everyone put on your tin foil hats so the aliens can't read your thoughts.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

I'd say that's actually a very good post. Why should straights be allowed to serve openly in the military and not LGBTs? Don't Ask Don't Tell, is discriminatory, however you look at it. And as I'm sure most of us will agree, discrimination based on sexuality is wrong.

 

[El Nino]

thanks. I copped out on the conclusion again. Let me try to fix that.

Conclusion:
The issue has little to do with what danger homosexuals pose to the straight community. The fact is, there have always been individuals with such leanings in the worlds' socieities. The issue here is how the straight world is going to handle the release of its own denial about the nature of not just homosexuality but heterosexuality itself. In biology, there is no holy template that is "correct." In biology, deviations do occur, variations exist, and the norm is only defined by numbers and percentages. Without mistakes and abnormalities, there would be no evolution and no biodiversity; we would all be single-celled lifeforms in the image of the Last Universal Common Ancestor.

The issue here, in real life terms, is whether or not the military is ready to openly accept the existence of homosexuals among its ranks. There will always be LGBT members of the military; no policy will stop people who want to serve from serving. DADT did not perpetuate LGBT denial; it perpetuated heterosexual denial. Being open is not a revelation to the LGBT person; the LGBT person already knows their sexuality. So the change to take place here is not within the LGBT community; the change to take place is within the heterosexual community, when it can finally release its own insecurities and escape its own state of denial.

/too tired to fix errors

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

thanks. I copped out on the conclusion again. Let me try to fix that.

Conclusion:
The issue has little to do with what danger homosexuals pose to the straight community. The fact is, there have always been individuals with such leanings in the worlds' socieities. The issue here is how the straight world is going to handle the release of its own denial about the nature of not just homosexuality but heterosexuality itself. In biology, there is no holy template that is "correct." In biology, deviations do occur, variations exist, and the norm is only defined by numbers and percentages. Without mistakes and abnormalities, there would be no evolution and no biodiversity; we would all be single-celled lifeforms in the image of the Last Universal Common Ancestor.

The issue here, in real life terms, is whether or not the military is ready to openly accept the existence of homosexuals among its ranks. There will always be LGBT members of the military; no policy will stop people who want to serve from serving. DADT did not perpetuate LGBT denial; it perpetuated heterosexual denial. Being open is not a revelation to the LGBT person; the LGBT person already knows their sexuality. So the change to take place here is not within the LGBT community; the change to take place is within the heterosexual community, when it can finally release its own insecurities and escape its own state of denial.

/too tired to fix errors

That's a pretty neat conclusion actually.

 

[Sucumbio]

I think the real question is whether or not the gay community will forgive Obama for taking so long. This was part of his initial platform, and his delays in getting this done as earned him a lot of heat. Now that it's passed, it seems it's not enough, as the gay community now sees it as a convenient choice given his term is almost over and he's given up on re-election. I don't necessarily agree with this stance, but it's interesting nonetheless.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Term almost over? Given up on reelection? Dude... He has two more years.

 

[Sucumbio]

Let it never be said that gay's have a flair for the dramatic Nah that's why I tend not to agree... I think they're just mad that he didn't do it right away after election, but I hate to say it, as President you have to prioritize.

 

[El Nino]

American voters are quick to punish, but that type of rashness just hurts you in the end. I was never all up on Obama's nuts, but even I knew that the problems his administration faced coming in weren't going to get fixed overnight.

LGBT supporters were burned over his tepid/neutral stance on same-sex marriage. But when it comes to the military, it could be that the wars have been fueling some of their anger. There are more people (both gay, straight or otherwise) serving in the military since the wars began, so it makes sense that lobbyists want to push to make sure that everyone gets their benefits. That's the practical side of things. If you die, does your spouse/partner get any survivor benefits? Especially since same-sex marriage keeps getting shut down. It's not all about ideology and rights and passionate speeches about equality. Some of it is just practical.

But I do agree that the LGBT community bringing down the hammer on Obama for this is probably the wrong move. Progress means hard work, and acting out like a self-entitled brat gets you nothing. Either bring down the hammer on the whole system, or pull up your sleeves and get real about things.

/rant

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

I think the real question is whether or not the gay community will forgive Obama for taking so long. This was part of his initial platform, and his delays in getting this done as earned him a lot of heat. Now that it's passed, it seems it's not enough, as the gay community now sees it as a convenient choice given his term is almost over and he's given up on re-election. I don't necessarily agree with this stance, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Sure, there's the fact that this took forever, but I would have thought they'd be happy about it. I mean better late than never right? The fact that they can serve in the military openly now, is good. Why should anyone punish a President for doing the right thing, just a little late?

 

[Sucumbio]

Well it's more about why should gay's always take a back seat, kinda thing. This is just another example of how their consideration came -eventually- or _finally_ or what have you. There's this concept in today's culture that I tend to think stems from the I Me Mine generation, which boils down to what El Nino was saying... brats. But to be fair, he earned their vote with verve. I WILL represent your best interests. I WILL put a stop to bigotry and blah blah blah. And he did... just not quickly enough, lol. meh.

edit: damn firefox >< anyway in addition to this the community at large is still missing one big piece of the american pie, which is the right to be married. this recent vote is really a small prize, a consolation. And as the OP mentions, what will it really change? we'll see.

 

[DoH]

Getting DADT passed is a really important step towards full legal equality. This argument is from my DWYP from a couple years back.




Lastly, the military has been a catalyst for change in past civil rights struggles. For African Americans, they were allowed into the military before they had the right to marry white people, as they fought in World War II but it wasn't until 1967, in Loving v. Virginia, that anti-miscegenation laws were finally struck down. In The Long Arc of Justice, Richard Mohr, professor of philosophy at the U of Illinois, posits that



Quote:
The military is nominally intended to defend what the country is, but as its racial and gender histories show, it is one of the chief institutions by which the nation defines what the country is and what to count as full personhood and full citizenship. Take the Civil War. Even though the North was fighting (at least in part) to end black slavery, both North and South initially conceived the war as one to be carried out only between white men - full citizens. President Lincoln (it may come as a surprise to learn) was not seeking full citizenship for blacks, did not entertain black equal protection, and opposed the black vote. He thought blacks should be like women as far as citizenship was concerned. But under the press of necessity, both sides, by war's end, had resorted to the deployment of black combat troops. For many southerners, this reconfiguration of the army was the equivalent of having lost the war even before hostilities were over. For in being combatants, blacks had changed their definition and assumed the rank of full citizens. They could no longer be thought of as slaves. The North cast this conceptual shift into institutional, indeed constitutional form. The Fourteenth Amendment granted full citizenship and equal protection rights to blacks, and the Fifteenth Amendment conferred the vote on black men. At least on the plane of the nation's ideals, the Civil War and its amendments catapulted the nation far ahead of Lincoln's understanding of race.

The ban on homosexual presence in the military operates at a similar profound level of national definition. Straight male soldier’s skittishness, which the military uses to try and justify the suppression of any gay male presence in the armed forces, is a mere surface phenomenon, masking a much deeper and wider cultural anxiety about gay men - anxiety over understanding the male body as a penetrable object. For the military, the real person, the full citizen, is defined as one who must penetrate while never being penetrated. Conversely, it defines the enemy as a potentially penetrating but actually penetrated body. The citizen warrior first "penetrates" the enemy's lines and then penetrates the enemy himself for the kill.

Lifting the ban on gay soldiers will not only, finally acknowledge the full status of gays as citizens in America - important as that recognition is on its own - but also begin, as did the ending of slavery, to transform our understanding of who we are as people. It will change our ideals, whatever our failed or partial practices of them may be. The ending of slavery meant that a person may no longer view another essentially as just an instrument or tool in his or her own projects. The end of the military’s ban on gay male presence will extend this line of cultural thinking and point the direction of equally momentous cultural change and moral improvement.

[Editor's note; I've underlined the parts I'll be using as my argument, but left in the rest of the text in a smaller font in case anyone wants to read it.]

The soldier is the model of the perfect citizen in American thought. If gays are not allowed to be a part of that model, then full citizenship rights can never be conferred. Being able to fight for our country is key to furthering the gay rights movement, and has historically been necessary to achieve equal rights, such as marriage and adoption.

My biggest beef with Obama is that he keeps on saying that he couldn't do stuff, Congress needed to, but he could have frozen discharges while Congress twiddled its thumbs, and he could have had his justice department not defend DADT from the various lawsuits, and he could have had his justice department not defend policies that promote inequality.