Posted on 05/04/2008 5:32:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Any Harvard student with the balls to participate in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) deserves our respect. Quite frankly, ROTC doesnt sound like a whole lot of fun.
For four years, cadets and midshipmen wake up obscenely early in order to trek to MIT and get yelled at by their instructors. Thats an indignity that Harvard usually reserves for accounting students. If you want to know what visceral discomfort looks like, watch a Harvard ROTC student shuffle across campus in his military uniform. Banished by the Faculty in 1969 amid a rising tide of anti-war sentiment on Harvards campus, ROTC has more recently been relegated to its pariah status because of the militarys mindless discrimination against homosexuals. Forget the active duty that follows graduationfor our peers in uniform, the years of glory-free self-sacrifice start in Harvard Yard.
Their one moment in the sun comes during the week of Commencement, when Harvards cadets and midshipmen receive their commissions and their first salutes in a touching, deeply significant ceremony in Harvard Yard. Its a chance to celebrate new officers past achievements and their future service to the nation. Their recognition is richly deserved.
This year, University President Drew G. Faust will attend the ROTC commissioning, but with an asterisk. Proof to the aged adagebeware geeks bearing giftsFaust will harness the symbolism of her appearance by criticizing Dont Ask, Dont Tell, (DADT) the federal law that bars openly gay Americans from serving in the military. While she will recognize the value of military service, Faust will also express her wish that, every Harvard student had the opportunity to serve in the military.
Few at Harvard disagree with the sentiment. Even Harry R. Lewis 68, former dean of the College and one of Harvard ROTCs staunchest advocates, argued on this page last year that, the ban on homosexuals in the military is unwise. The dispute here is not over Fausts message, but rather her timing. If its going to be political, I think everyone would be happier having someone else speak, one Marine midshipman told The Crimson earlier this week.
But ROTC graduates happiness is, unfortunately, not the issue. On June 4, they will be commissioned in a military ceremony in Harvard Yard, despite the fact that the military explicitly violates Harvards non-discrimination code by forbidding gays and lesbians to serve.
President Faust should absolutely use the occasion to express this communitys moral outrage at DADT. It would be offensive to our values for Harvards ROTC graduates not to begin their service in the shadow of the Pentagons repugnant discrimination. (These values are, incidentally, not just President Fauststhere is no shortage of Harvard ROTC students who oppose DADT, but who are forced to keep their silence because of the militarys restrictions on their free speech.)
Other Americans seem perfectly capable of respecting the militaryif, perhaps, from a distancewhile remaining deeply ashamed of its intolerance of homosexuals. It is incumbent on the militarys youngest officers to feel the same way, evenindeed, especiallyat an event with as much military and personal significance as the commissioning ceremony.
It is hardly extreme to claim that all Americans who value liberty and equalitynot just those in uniformshould be deeply embarrassed by the profound systemic discrimination that DADT embodies. What kind of liberal democracy, after all, can passively abide what Faust rightly described last week as a badge of degradation or second-class citizenship for gay Americans?
The point, however, is not to hold cadets and midshipmen responsible for their political overlords intolerance. The decision to ban gays from the military was not theirs to make. But if this country is to overcome the well-worn prejudices that make DADT possible politically, then moral objections to the status quo must be involved wherever the military and civil society meetin Harvard Yard, for example. And the generation of military officers now being educated at Harvard and elsewhere should rightly have their service tinted by the discrimination of DADT, at their commissioning and elsewhere.
Some will object, of course, that mine is a deeply political, even partisan view. Paul E. Mawn 63, who chairs the pressure group Advocates for Harvard ROTC, declared this week that, its not appropriate to talk politics at a military service. Joseph M. Kristol 09, a Marine ROTC midshipman, despaired that Fausts comments would radicalize the ceremony.
Opposing discrimination is, however, neither political nor radical. Dismissing Faustsand Harvardsobjections to anti-gay discrimination as political cloaks the issue in the mundane. ROTC graduates certainly earn their right to celebrate their commissioning with their peers and their families, but they do not deserve to ignore blithely the militarys formal discrimination in the course of their revelry. On June 4, President Faust owes it to this institution and its values to at least offer a gentle reminder of the discrimination that the military has come to represent.
As they sally forth to serve their country with pride, Harvards ROTC graduates should do so with firm misgivings about the discrimination built into the organization of which they will have become part. Only by doing so can they aspire to overcome the generational divide that stands between the status quo and real equality of citizenship for gay Americans.
With a draft you have people who don’t want to be there, and in many cases, shouldn’t, although it would be funny to see these pansy-@ss wimps receive some much-needed military discipline.
I’m a Harvard alumnus (we DO exist on FR, contrary to liberal opinion), and a socially and culturally conservative Christian.
I am deeply ashamed that Harvard elected the feminazi Drew Gilpin Faust as its President. This happened in order to appease a politically-correct, ultra-liberal, feminazi-laden faction of the Facuty of Arts and Sciences (plus outside agitators, the biggest of whom I know personally), and despite the opposition of professional school faculty and many alumni and alumnae.
And I oppose the homosexual agenda, root and branch. One should be able to do so at Harvard or anywhere else without being labeled as a “bigot”.
Making a political statement supporting “gay rights” at a military commissioning, and implying that opposing these “rights” is “obviously bigoted”, is wrong, and is disrespectful of the puropse of the ceremony and the achievements and dedication of those commissioned. And it is even wrong to make such a statement at a commencement ceremony, for not unrelated reasons.
This guy needs an editor -- unless this is a Freudian slip and he doesn't really believe the rest of what he's writing.
I bet headline writers are taking FR barf alerts into consideration and lengthening their titles. ;-)
That article code is effectively dead letter after Lawrence V. Texas.
To quote fellow Freeper BASICLOAD (see my homepage);
BASICLOAD SAYS; "When will it be OK for Gays to openly serve in our military? When we change the entire culture of our country, thats when.
When there are no more male and female bathrooms and the Army requires females to shower with me in the same open showers, thats when.
A female in the military deserves no more privacy than I deserve when it comes to my right NOT to be looked at by a gay man while undressed.
So you see that there is no good way out of this situation, but I will tell you one thing, the secular liberals in this country cannot have their cake and eat it too. When I have soapy boobs in my face in the shower, gays can look at my butt.
That just about sums it all up.
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