“Of course, an individual soldier must be true to their morals. That is why I support allowing honorable discharge to those who, for their own religious moral reasons, cannot accept the situation if DADT is repealed. But unit cohesion dictates that if gays are assigned to a unit, that unit must treat gays just like straights.”
That my friend is insane. It will remove those from military service best able to deal with it, and those that make the best soldiers. You confirm my worst fears about repealing DADT...the destruction of our military forces by stepping on FIRST AMMENDMENT rights of a large minority in favor of a shaky small one.
I know it isn’t right to denigrate someone just because they don’t agree with you. However, I must question if you are not a homophile or homosexual yourself. Or if you harbor anti Christian bias. The Judeo Christian view against homosexual behavior are well over 2000 years old. These so call religious views favoring it are a very recent aboration.
You are evaluating the situation with a moral standard, and I’m evaluating from the point of view of military chain of command.
I don’t see how you could possibly operate a military if individual soldiers can decide whether or not to fight for or with other soldiers based on their personal moral viewpoints. No matter how correct those moral viewpoints are, you simply can’t have unit cohesion if soldiers can’t count on each other to follow orders and work together.
From that perspective, IF they decide to let gays serve openly, I see no choice other than to let people who don’t like that take honorable discharges. You can’t have troops who won’t fight together in the same unit, and you aren’t going to form gay units (which would be another somewhat rational choice), since units would still count on other units.
But lets talk morals. Homosexuality is a sin. So is adultery. Should soldiers be allowed to not defend their fellow soldiers if they know those soldiers found a prostitute the night before, or are living with their girlfriends but not married? Those are sins. What if we know a man cheated on his wife? Do we get to let him be exposed to enemy fire, because we don’t want to fight for a sinner who is deliberately and willfully living in sin (I say that to avoid the obvious problem that all of us are sinners).
In my opinion, and I believe I am correct, the argument against gays in the military is not founded on the immorality of a gay lifestyle, but rather on the problems that having an openly gay person causes in a unit (a problem that would exist with any declared gay man, whether that person was engaged in homosexual acts, or had decided to live a celibate life because they believed homosexual acts were immoral).
The younger generation have been sufficiently brainwashed that they no longer have an aversion to homosexuals, even though many of them are still disgusted and averse to the homosexual acts. I see this with my own children, and their friends.
I believe that within the next 20 years, nobody is going to consider serving in the military with an openly homosexual person to be distracting or damaging to the troop morale. Heterosexuals and homosexuals are already working next to each other throughout our society, in some cases forced by anti-discrimination statutes, but also by simply tolerance and respect for privacy.
I’ve never had a problem being with homosexuals. They are immoral, sinners, living outside the will of God. THey are often selfish, immature, and self-centered. But so are many of my non-homosexual non-christian aquaintances (and more then a few christian aquaintances).
I oppose gays in the military, including the DADT policy. I think it’s absurd to consider the gay rights movement, gay marriage, civil unions, or gay adoption. Those are all part of the selfishness of people who want not only to live an abberant lifestyle simply because it’s how the “feel”, but they want to force the world to accept them, embrace them, and give them special treatment.
But I’ve long since stopped caring whether the person I’m talking to is gay, or an adulterer, or a thief, or an idolater.