I read Bart’s “beatdown” of Medved regarding gays serving openly in the military. I move to strike as non-responsive.
Let me start by saying I have nothing against anybody in the LGBT community. I believe that in the wide spectrum of human sexual response, homosexuality is most properly viewed as just another normal part of the continuum. I believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry or divorce or anything else their heterosexual counterparts are allowed to do. My response to the “man-marries-sheep” obfuscation is: “Yes, they SHOULD be allowed to marry…just as soon as the sheep can give recognizable consent and sign the marriage license.”
In short, I don’t care who’s sleeping with whom, so long as someone’s sleeping with me…
As to military service, I have no doubt that gay individuals serve with distinction (and sometimes not – just like anybody else). I don’t question their toughness, loyalty, willingness to serve, dedication to the mission, nor their abilities. I have exactly one issue – and one issue only – regarding military service by openly gay individuals: How do you house them?
I should say that I’ve served in the Air Force. I’ve slept in open bays with fifty-some-odd other guys and showered in open showers with them as well. Based on statistics, I’d say that at least one of those guys may well have been gay. Maybe he saw my penis. Maybe he even liked it. Oh-my-GOD, maybe he even thought about it while he had a “private moment”! So what? What I didn’t know at the time didn’t hurt me. But in a very real sense, I was “protected” by the idea that he was FORCED to be closeted.
I’ll ask you to take my word for the fact that in basic training one does not have the option of choosing when to shower, how long one can stay in the shower, nor with whom one will shower. But, because of MY human sexual response, if you send me in to shower with fifty women, I’m going to look. I’m going to develop opinions about who I think is hot and who’s not. I’m going to decide who I would sleep with and who I wouldn’t. (It’s a guy thing. It doesn’t pretend she would sleep with me…) I’m VERY likely to make a pass at a woman I find appealing…
…and every single woman in that shower would know, absolutely, what me and my erection were thinking. Not because I’m an animal or somehow sub-human or incapable of managing my behavior, but because it’s my natural human sexual response – in exactly the same way it’s the natural human sexual response of a gay man to be attracted to other men. (And if regulations said I couldn’t respond, I’d hide it, too, but I’d still think it. If I convinced myself she might be interested, I might well pursue it regardless of the regs.)
To simply pretend that natural human response is irrelevant ignores it’s effect and leaves the military facing an entirely new set of problems. No matter how I arrange it in my mind, it seems to me one cannot manage housing gays without simultaneously advocating co-ed units because one cannot make an argument that applies to one and not the other. Any difficulties you can imagine with housing heterosexual men and women together MUST be taken into account when considering housing homosexual individuals, specifically because people are people, gay or straight. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand the kinds of problems introduced.
Let me be clear. I’m not saying, “I’m opposed”. I’m saying, “I don’t know how”. How does one house gay individuals without introducing a new set of gargantuan problems and impediments to “unit cohesion”? That’s all I’m asking…
Scribe is going to try this again. He typed it once, hit submit, and it went bye bye.
Computers are a-holes, sometimes.
“How do you house them?”
Same as you housed them before. Anyone making unwanted advances that won’t back off? Military discipline time. Indeed that is an important part of being a good soldier: discipline. Why should the focus be on what someone finds they are uncomfortable with? So the GLBT community should suffer because someone doesn’t have enough discipline to politely reject such things? Besides, advances should not be made most of the time anyway, no matter what one’s sexual skew. There’s a serious job here, people, and playing with each other is not part of it.
“To simply pretend that natural human response is irrelevant ignores it’s effect and leaves the military facing an entirely new set of problems.”
You’re making Scribe’s point for him. “irrelevant?” Obviously not. The question here is who you discipline or force to behave here: the person who is so squimish that they can’t do their job around someone who isn’t like them, or the someone that first person is can’t stand because of who they are.
“…and every single woman in that shower would know, absolutely, what me and my erection were thinking.”
You’re making Scribe’s point for him again. Seen many erections? The GLBT community who is in the military obviously has more self: military friendly discipline than many heteros. They have been showering with us in places like the YMCA and other communal venues for years. So we should reward heteros who hate, others, or can’t control themselves?
If from early childhood on the human body wasn’t verboten then a lot of this would subside. The very fact that being naked is forbidden fruit (Ah, there’s a biblical pun there, for sure.) is probably the major cause of rape, unwanted and forceful advances… etc.
Note: Scribe is not a nudist, though he thinks they have SOME points… literally and figuratively. Besides, the next to lowest level of hell would be a nudist colony populated with Olde farts like Scribe. The lowest? Eternal Public Radio fundraising.
Comment by Ye Olde Scribe — September 17, 2007 @ 9:30 am
I’m not sure you’ve countered anything I said about Medved, but the way things are now, you ARE showering with gay men, you just don’t know which ones are gay.
Comment by Bart — September 17, 2007 @ 11:36 am
Bart, I wasn’t trying to counter anything you said about Medved. My observation is that you didn’t actually respond to what he said, you just called him names…
Further, I thought I had addressed and rejected the issue of my own personal discomfort in the question as ascribed by Ye Olde Scribe. So let’s try this another way…
Let’s say the DoD announces today they plan to begin inducting openly gay individuals (“openly gay” is the key, here) and housing them right alongside heteros based only on gender and NOT sexual preference. How do you think that would affect overall enlistments?
Do you actually support co-ed housing? Do you think that such living arrangements might introduce a whole new set of problems?
I’m not talking about crimes (groping, rape, sexual harassment, etc) What if the squad leader falls in love with a member of the squad and refuses to send his/her lover on dangerous missions even though said lover is most qualified?
What if said love affair goes south and now the squad leader send the ex-lover on every mission, qualified or not…walking point…?
Current military regulations discourage fraternization between officers and enlisted people for exactly this type of reason (although it still happens). What case can be made that such interactions would NOT increase by housing people together who have high likelihoods of sexual attraction, gay or straight?
Please don’t give me a response about what people “should” do. The military has to deal with what people ACTUALLY do.
Comment by macrobank — September 19, 2007 @ 8:27 am