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Sorry, I think the whole "good order and discipline" thing is a ruse.

Opinions without any bases in experience, fact or logic are worthless. You have failed to present any bases for you opinions which I hold to be error based upon my knowledge, direct experience and that of many others. If you wish to prove my assertion wrong, you must submit convincing evidence and irrefutable logic. To date, you have not done so.

In contrast to your unsupported opinions, I have cited relevant portions of the UCMJ on this thread along with statistics that back my opinions. It is not too much to ask you to do the same.

If ignoring orders about sexual behavior was actually detrimental to good order and discipline, the tens of thousands of straight soldiers who are engaging in uninvestigated and unprosecuted oral and anal sex would clearly be creating a massive problem in the ranks.

Cite your proof that tens of thousands of straight soldiers … are engaging in uninvestigated and unprosecuted oral and anal sex. If you have none, then your point is specious and should be ignored.

I'm glad you're willing to see those straight soldiers investigated and discharged, no matter what the cost to our ability to fight wars…

Thank you for the compliment on my consistency with the law. Nonetheless, I must ask how many years of military experience to you base this assessment on? Exactly what is the cost to our ability to fight wars and how do you calculate it?

… I respectfully submit we'd be much better off offically allowing all our soldiers, regardless of orientation, the privacy to have whatever sort of sex they want, provided it's in private and with consenting adults.

Your respectful submission has been noted and, after due consideration, disregarded as groundless. In fact, it is countered by the thoughtful deliberations of more than 400 members of Congress, thousands of commanders in decades of experience and innumerable citizens of the US. Consequently, I equally respectfully submit that you abandon your ill-informed and poorly considered opinion in favor of one based upon fact, logic and the experience of those better positioned to make such judgements than you.

Sorry, you're right. I pulled "tens of thousands" out of thin air. Now that I've googled for some numbers, I think I have to say "easily half a million" instead.

There are aproximately 1.4 million active duty military. (from Wikipedia. You can confirm with the census if you prefer.)

CDC reports that 90% of men 25-54 have had oral sex with a female; 40% have had anal sex with a female. Now, there's obviously no quick and easy way to make the numbers fit, but I see here that the average man in the Army is 28 years old, so he'd fit in that range. Now, of course, it's likely that the UCMJ makes some percentage of those men think twice before they allow a woman to perform oral sex on them, or before they engage in anal sex with a woman -- but I don't really don't know how much to discount the numbers. Do you think cutting them in half sounds fair? If we did that, and said 45% of them have had oral, we'd be looking at over 600,000 soldiers under investigation for engaging in oral sex.

Whatever the actual number, I think it's fair to say it's certainly a lot more than the number engaging in homosexual contact. Since they're both equally against regulations, and since our military continues to be the finest in the world, I fail to see where we have a order and discipline problem stemming from all this "unnatural carnal copulation."

Neither one of us is budging from our positions on this; let's just call it a day.