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.

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.