Back when Senator John McCain was a straight talker, he said that if military leadership ever told him that repealing "don't ask, don't tell" would be in the best interest of the forces, then he would change his views on the matter.
That was then and this is now.
Today, top brass went beyond what any currently-serving military leader has every said about discrimination against gays and lesbians. According to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, the gay ban "fundamentally undermines who we are" and repealing it would make the military better. Secretary of Defense Gates also said that the ban should be lifted.
In response, Senator McCain and other Republicans fabricated phony arguments left and right. The 28 percent response rate to the military's survey on gays, they said, is too low and renders the results invalid. Forget the fact that that's about average for web-based as well as military surveys. Forget that any social scientist will tell you that response rates have nothing to do with the validity of a survey's results as long as the pool of respondents is drawn properly. In this case, the military's survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percent.
Then Republicans said that they just want to be sure not to rush things. Rush!? The Pentagon has been studying the issue for almost a year. There were more than 20 prior studies, all of which found the same thing, that gay troops don't harm the military. "Don't ask, don't tell" was supposed to be a temporary compromise when it was enacted 17 years ago. And, the first soldier fired for gay sex was drummed out of the Continental Army more than 230 years ago! How much slower do the Republicans want to go?
Then the Republicans repeated the only phony claims about combat effectiveness. Sure, a bunch of combat troops say that repeal would undermine combat effectiveness. But saying something is going to happen is not the same as showing that it is going to happen. Service members in foreign militaries also said that gays would undermine combat effectiveness, but when gay bans were lifted in those countries, there was no impact at all. And get this: of the 69 percent of U.S. troops who serve or suspect they serve with gays, 92 percent said that repealing the ban would not undermine their unit's ability to work together. If gays undermined combat effectiveness we would have seen that already in Iraq and Afghanistan (and for that matter, Kuwait, Vietnam, Korea, and World War II, all of which included openly serving gay troops).
My favorite baloney of the day was the Republican talking point that the Pentagon Working Group failed to listen to the troops or ask them whether "don't ask, don't tell" should be repealed. Huh? The troops offered opinions on this and other topics in an on-line inbox that received 72,384 comments, in 95 face-to-face forums at 51 bases that included more than 24,000 troops, and in 140 smaller focus groups. It is true that the survey did not include a question about whether the troops want repeal. But the troops had a lot of other opportunities to express that point. And we already know from three different polls, (Annenberg, Zogby, and Military Times) that approximately 40 percent of the troops oppose repeal, 30 percent favor it, and 30 percent don't know or don't care.
Why can't the Republicans just be honest? They don't care what is good for the military. They don't care about what the Secretary of Defense says. They don't care about what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says. They don't care about the data. They don't care about methodology. They don't care about process. They care about one thing and one thing only: prejudice. And when it comes to prejudice, all they want is more, more more.
And the opposite is also true. When the traditional beliefs of a nation erode, the nation dies. Religion provides the set of standards that govern a nation. Historian Will Durant said, "There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion."
Unfortunately, this nation has embarked on a journey to maintain a society without a religious code. The Ten Commandments are pulled from the walls, and religious values are stripped. We're told if we stand up to our religious values/standards we are bigots.
Christian principles are no longer taught in the public schools and often ridiculed in education and media. You have to wonder what the fate of this country will be in the future.
Specifically what religious value are you standing up for in regards to gay rights? It isn't love, hope, or charity, that's for sure. More likely it's hate, and fear that you are succumbing to.
His voting record for the troops he so deeply cares about is always a nay. He doesn't believe others in the military deserve the same benefits he enjoyed as an officer and child. When he saw he wasn't going to get his star he punched. As a senator he is able to influence what he couldn't as an officer.
My belief? It's really two things. They are terrified of upsetting their conservative religious fundamental base. But even more than that? I think they find the whole thing, for lack of a better word, icky. They can try & dress it up & twist the facts to suit their own needs, but they really, really, just find the whole idea of, for instance, gays showering next to straights icky and want it all to go away.
Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude. George Washington
y respecting their privacy.
Before DDT, homosexuality per se had been grouinds for administrative discharge. The old Marine Corps Separations Manual dealing with discharges actually defined four "classes" of homosexuals for purposes of separating individuals from the service. Category 1 was tendenciies, no acts; up to Category 4, which meant homosexual rape. In practice, I never even heard of anyone being discharged as a "Category 1 homosexual."
DADT was long after my time so I have no experience of how it works in practice. I can see that it was the camel's nose in the tent, which of course was quite predictable..
Dan Savage said it best the other day, that Jon McCain's flip flops and desperate maneuvers are so patently false they can ONLY be caused by anti-gay animus... which is the definition of bigotry.
My question is this: Why should 2% of the population (the homosexuals) control what happens nation wide?
so, if you're gonna tell us where to go.. ya better get busy cuz we out number y'all.
And stop with the threats. If Congress doesn't overturn the law, the Courts will. There is that "equal treatment" thingy in the Constitution.