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72 posted on Thursday, December 22, 2011 10:32:34 AM by Arrowhead1952: “I had to go through that training too, even though I am retiring at the end of Jan. I wanted to throw up about some of the suggestions in that half day of sitting in a classroom.”

Arrowhead, I sincerely hope you kept copies of training materials and detailed notes of what got said, and that you post them on Free Republic after you hang up your uniform for the last time.

I suspect there are several members of the House Armed Services Committee (Rep. Hartzler and Rep. West, for example) who may be very interested in what you have to say and are angry enough about the gay agenda that they may be able to get some national attention on this issue. The senior GOP leaders are likely to let the “backbencher” junior members start the fight on this, and then join the fight if the backbenchers get enough people riled up.

Notes on what got said by the trainer are critical. I've heard horror stories and the training seems to differ considerably from trainer to trainer. My guess is that means the “guidelines” are inherently open to interpretation, and that's dangerous in and of itself.

As a recent New York Times article on the different but not entirely unrelated issue of high school sex education classes pointed out, some of the “push the envelope” sex educators don't want formal changes in the written curriculum because it could attract opposition, and prefer to focus on changing high school student's perceptions via classroom discussions which don't show up in print.

However, I do realize that there's an alternative explanation to the differences in how people are reacting to the training on homosexuality. Maybe some servicemembers are more “sensitized” to stuff that highly offends others. That doesn't necessarily mean the people who aren't as offended agree with homosexuality. I've dealt with gay agenda stuff for at least thirty years, my church membership was once in a church in Greenwich Village (where for many years it was the only evangelical congregation, though there are now others), and very little shocks me anymore. An 18-year-old private who grew up in rural America may get furious at things that I don't like but no longer choose to fight because there are worse problems out there.