The 2011 repeal of the U.S. military's controversial " Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy has received almost unanimous praise from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates, but one right-wing pundit isn't having any of it.
Responding to what appears to be a disturbing spike in sexual assault allegations within the U.S. military, Family Research Council Vice President Jerry Boykin linked the trend to the DADT repeal, suggesting the “sexualization of our military with social engineering” was partly responsible, Right Wing Watch first reported.
"One of the things that most of the people don’t realize is in a recent survey there are actually more men that have been sexually assaulted than women," Boykin told former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. "We are trying to violate the laws of nature, failing to recognize that these young men and women are at the peak of their sex drive when we try to mix the genders for reasons that to me are illogical and in doing so what we are doing is we are inviting this kind of behavior, it’s not acceptable and it has to be punished and dealt with."
Of course, Boykin isn't the first conservative pundit to link the DADT repeal to the U.S. military's sexual assault surge. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has expressed similar sentiments, Right Wing Watch previously reported.
"President Obama is finally admitting that sexual assault is a serious problem in the military--but what he hasn’t conceded is that his policy on homosexuality helped create it," Perkins wrote, according to the report. "How could this happen? Well, for starters, the Obama administration ordered military leaders to embrace homosexuality -- completely dismissing the concerns that it could be a problem to have people attracted to the same sex, living in close quarters."
Meanwhile, HuffPost Gay Voices' Lila Shapiro reported that the first academic study of the military's new open-service policy, conducted in 2012, found no negative consequences whatsoever.
Listen to the full interview with Boykin, courtesy of Right Wing Watch, below:
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