Posted on 07/19/2008 12:04:55 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
The House Armed Services Committee has scheduled the first hearings to review the "don't ask don't tell" law since it was enacted in 1993 under President Clinton. The law disqualifies homosexuals from serving in the military.
Individuals are deemed homosexual, according to this law, if they publicly state so. However, the military is prohibited from asking. Thus, "don't ask don't tell."
Activists are now pushing for change to allow homosexuals to serve openly.
The discussion we can anticipate will be technical. Does the presence of openly homosexual soldiers undermine "cohesiveness" of units, morale and discipline? How would retention rates of troops or enlistments be affected?
For certain, however, discussion about the general moral implications of such a policy will not take place.
When early last year then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace called homosexuality "immoral," more fire and brimstone rained down on him than fell on the residents of Sodom and Gomorra for engaging in this behavior.
Rebukes came from Democrats and Republicans alike. Republican Sen. John Warner, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, writing his own scripture, challenged Pace's "view that homosexuality is immoral."
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Under the present regime...nothing will occur.
In January...if it were “President Obama”....then we would see the likely scenario of Obama ordering the SECDEF to form a new policy. Note that Obama won’t use an executive order because this leads back to the White House as the culprit. The SECDEF will be directed to open the door and just forget about “don’t ask and don’t tell”. The initial damage? Around six major admirals and generals will resign within two weeks of this announcement. Several individuals will query the SECDEF about the meaning of sodomy in the UMCJ...which is a prosecution-type offense and dictated to the US military by congress. Neither the SECDEF or the president can rewrite the Code of Military Justice. Neither will care to have a full-blown summer of gay-discussions in congress next year.
So I’m going suggest that all this talk....is just talk. Nothing will really change. Obama has to have the full support of the democratic congress...to enact any of his reforms. Tossing a entire summer of gay discussions upon them....won’t make them happy and will stall all of his potential programs. So this is merely a topic to make the gay special interest groups think that they are going to achieve results via Obama. They won’t....and its another special interest group that finds his promises to be empty by the end of his four-year period.
> Activists are now pushing for change to allow homosexuals to serve openly. <
The intolerance showed by the “supposed” tolerant people. Amazing.
From a less than 5% of the population actually telling the vast majority how to “accept” their lifestyle...
The Constitution is in place to protect minority rights. Regardless of how you feel on gay rights, the law is set up to protect minorities.
The majority does not have to accept their lifestyle but it deserves protection according to the Founders.
What the activists want is the Armed Forces to COMPLY TO THEIR LIFESTYLE instead of the other way around.
Huh? Protection from what? The founders wrote protections of what one could only believe they (the framers) considered an aberrant and despicable act, into the Constitution? I will have to re-read, but I don't think there are any protections provided for behaviors and least of all, sexual behaviors. If so, then polygamists have been persecuted unconstitutionally for lo these many years, as well as your run of the mill adulterers.
Ditto.
Yeah, the Founding Fathers supported acceptance of turd burgling. That's the ticket.
It has nothing to do with "protecting rights" of the poor, unappreciated deviants. It has to do with having a functional, effective set of armed forces to defend our country.
"Gays" have proven to be corrosive to units because they aren't even close to normal - they are far more obsessed with sexuality, have huge numbers of partners, and form a separate set of associations that cross unit, rank, and service boundaries.
Pretending that male gays are just like everybody else is stupid and threatens our services and in this world, our existence. This is no time for experimentation by people who have no idea what the services do for a living.
I wonder if it depends on one’s view of the Armed Services. Is serving one’s country in the Armed Forces a duty, a responsibility, a right, or a privilege?
If it is a Duty, then homosexualists should never be exempt: they must serve OR ELSE. (e.g. go-to-gaol or be hanged if during a time of war)
If it is a Responsibility, then homosexualists should discharge their responsibilities just like everyone else does, or they should find a way for somebody else to do it for them. (e.g., an exemption tax based on lifestyle?)
If it is a Right then provisions for homosexualists to serve in the Armed Forces should appear in your Bill of Rights. I am not aware that it does.
If it is a Privilege (which is in-line with my personal thoughts) then the status quo is just fine: homosexualists exempt themselves from this privilege: in their case by electing a lifestyle incompatible with the UCMJ.
If they are found out, boot ‘em out...
I am from the old school...
I didn't think so.
Come here better prepared next time.
Protection to live their lives in peace is certainly due to all citizens.
Protection to corrupt the military and pervert it into a medium for social experiment of a sick lifestyle isn't written anywhere. That seems to be the great delusion with regard tot the whole debate. The homosexual movement isn't content to live their lives in peace. They intend to inflict their lifestyle upon all citizens. The end results is that they want to turn every social institution and the armed services into a recruiting ground for their lifestyle.
And that isn't going to be permitted.
...the Constitution was in place to protect sodomy? You don’t by any chance clerk for Justice Souter, do you?
I look at it as an individual duty but we exclude so many people now (for asthma, drug use, diabetes, protein in the urine, criminal offenses, etc.) that it is hard to understand why excluding one more group is not in the interest of a good military. Personally, I’m more concerned about how few young republicans I know have done anything given the variety of active/reserve opportunities to serve. It truly is disgusting.
> I look at it as an individual duty but we exclude so many people now (for asthma, drug use, diabetes, protein in the urine, criminal offenses, etc.) that it is hard to understand why excluding one more group is not in the interest of a good military.
A good point, particularly as homosexualists are more likely to carry blood-borne pathogens like HIV and Hep-C. They tell me warfare can be a pretty bloody business, and it wouldn’t be such a good idea — I wouldn’t have thought — to have people with blood borne pathogens in a position to readily infect their comrades.
> I’m more concerned about how few young republicans I know have done anything given the variety of active/reserve opportunities to serve. It truly is disgusting.
On the upside, I bet even fewer young Democrats serve Society in any useful capacity at all.
When I was on Active Duty there was a platoon that was interviewed individually in regard to the impact of having had a gay soldier that had recently been discharged once command discovered his proclivities. This was an infantry platoon that spent a lot of time in the bushes away from home. The myth was that several of the married guys liked haivng him around in the field ‘because he gave great bjs”. I don’t think we need this sort of crap in the military.
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