The unremitting drum roll for allowing open homosexuality in the US
armed forces grows louder. President Barack Obama supports it. In May, the
House of Representatives passed the repeal of the “don’t ask; don’t tell” policy,
which has kept a lid on this issue for the past 17 years. On Friday, the Senate
began hearings on the repeal bill. Also, a federal district court has found the
policy unconstitutional (though subsequently an appellate court stayed the
injunction), though sodomy has been grounds for dismissal from the military
since the Revolutionary War.
Current law states that people who “demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage
in homosexual acts” because of their presence “would create an unacceptable
risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit
cohesion that are the essence of military capability.” President Bill Clinton also wanted to allow
homosexuals to serve openly in the services, but he was unable to revise the
law. As a compromise, he introduced the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in 1993.
Officially homosexuals are still not welcome, but they will not be punished or
discharged as long as they keep their orientation to themselves.
Last week, the
Pentagon released a
300-plus page report on the subject which concluded that repeal would not
cause any serious disruptions in the military. The
Republican-dominated Congress which will take office in January, will
undoubtedly be more skeptical about changing the current policy. So for
advocates of change, the issue is urgent. President Obama has asked the Senate
to vote as soon as possible, “so I can sign this repeal into law this year
and ensure that Americans who are willing to risk their lives for their country
are treated fairly and equally.”
The President has been supported by Pentagon bureaucrats, albeit
without great intellectual rigor.
In his testimony to the Senate Armed Services
Committee, poor Admiral Mike Mullen,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, never seemed to know when he was
shooting himself in the foot and making the very points he haplessly wished to
refute. In regard to the “bunk and shower” issues, he said that “I believe, and
history tells us, that most of them (the troops) will put aside personal
proclivities for something larger than themselves and for each other.” But
“put[ting] aside personal proclivities for something larger than themselves” is
exactly what the “don’t ask; don’t tell” policy asked of serving homosexuals. They
were only dismissed when they could not
or would not keep those personal proclivities aside for something larger.
Now the policy Mullen is advocating precisely promotes the personal
proclivities of homosexual troops who are not content with serving without
having their proclivities openly accommodated. Where exactly is the service to
“something larger than ourselves” in that? Poor Mullen, without noticing it,
has installed a set of personal proclivities while he thought he was
transcending them.
The Admiral testified that in his experience, he had “been serving with
gays and lesbians my whole career… I knew they were there. They knew I knew
it. And what’s more, nearly everyone in the crew knew it. We never missed a
mission, never failed to deliver ordnance on target.”
Well, if this is so, why change the policy? It seems to have served us
well.
Mullen explained why by trotting out his lame, often-repeated
imperative for repealing the policy, saying, according the Washington Post, that it “‘doesn’t make any sense to me,’ because
it requires troops to lie about their identity while serving for a military
that values integrity.”
This is a puzzling formulation because the policy he is overturning did
not require anyone to lie, as it prohibited asking if one was a homosexual in
the first place. However, the more important point that eluded Mullen is that
people with integrity can’t be forced to lie. Refusing to lie, even if it is
“required,” is exactly what defines integrity. In other words, what Mullen is
really doing is promoting a policy designed to accommodate people who would
otherwise lie as “required.” Is this valuing integrity?
The general conclusion of the parties favoring repeal seems to be that
the only remaining problem is with the prejudices of the military, not with
anything homosexuals do. None of the
reassuring messages from its proponents, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,
Admiral Mullen, the many op-eds in the Washington
Post and elsewhere, or in congressional testimony actually talk about or
even vaguely refer to homosexual acts or examine why anyone might consider such
behavior a problem in a military unit.
Yes, there are demure references to certain troops, say Marines, who
object to bunking or showering with homosexuals. In fact, last August, Gen.
James Conway, former Marine Corp commandant, said that “an overwhelming
majority [of Marines] would like not to be roomed with a person that is openly
homosexual.” But no one says why they
would not like it, or if their objections are based upon any good reason.
So, let’s get explicit, if not graphic. We begin by noting that the
most prized character in the military is masculinity or maleness. It is in the
military and most especially in battle that a man is at his most manly. He must
call upon all his warlike resources as a man to succeed. Combat requires
discipline, self-sacrifice, trust, strength and valor. Many men enter the
military exactly to test themselves, to become or to discover if they are real men – meaning men who can take the
hardship, the pressure, the violence, and the mortal danger. Therefore, they
prize masculinity in these terms, and, most especially, the camaraderie of
their fellow warriors.
What might offend these men in active homosexuals? Are homosexuals
somehow less masculine? Consider what
takes place in a homosexual relationship. In it, one man behaves toward another
man as if that other man were a woman. The other man willingly pretends that he
is a woman. For a man to pretend he
is a woman in a sodomic sexual act is, to say the least, unmanly. It is the
antithesis of maleness. This why in common parlance such a person is often
referred to as a “girlie man.” He is pretending he is a girl, and so is his
“partner.” By nature there is something cowardly in this, and that is why
“girlie men” are despised. They are being less than men.
If a “manly” man is approached by a homosexual to engage in this sexual
charade, his natural reaction is outrage and disgust. He considers it an
assault upon his masculinity and an insult to his manhood. (This outrage can
easily lead to violence, which is why the “closet” is exactly the place for any
homosexuals who wish to serve in the military, and why openly serving
homosexuals are disruptive to good order and unit cohesion). Is this man wrong
to be outraged at being “hit on” in this manner? If one expects him to be
manly, if masculinity is the quintessence of his profession, the answer is no.
Outrage and disgust are normal responses to something unnatural. This is, no
doubt, why the Pentagon report (pg. 74)
states that “Nearly 60% of respondents in the Marine Corps and in Army combat
arms said they believed there would be a negative impact on their unit’s
effectiveness in this context; among Marine combat arms the number was 67%.”
Therefore, what is to be done with these men? They are the obstacle to creating
a permissive attitude to homosexuality in America’s armed services. Well, then,
they must be trained; they must be reconditioned; they must be educated; and,
if nothing else works, they must be ordered to enter into the brave new world. Military
discipline, the chain of command, will be used to undermine the very virtue
that underlies that discipline.
In an extraordinary demonstration of the Chinese proverb that a fish
rots from the head, a lesbian professor at the Marine Corps University, Tammy
Schultz, in
a front page Sunday Outlook op-ed,
declared her hope for the successful implementation of the repeal of “don’t
ask; don’t tell” policy by quoting a Marine saying, “If the law changes, we
will comply with the law.” Indeed they will; they have to. The law is coercive.
“Perversion is no longer subversive,” writes left-wing intellectual
Slavoj Zizek. Of course it isn’t when perversion, or its general acceptance and
actual promotion, has become the norm. Today, it is virtue that is subversive. It
is virtue that dare not be named. The price of open homosexual service is
further to drive virtue, including the military virtues, underground as
deviancy is defined upward. This is not an accidental effect or simply
collateral damage; it is the larger purpose of revoking the policy of “don’t ask;
don’t tell.”
The military is the last
public bastion for these virtues; so it is now the target. It must be made to
kneel before moral abnormity. Men of honor must be required to acquiesce publically. Their fall will be the definitive
triumph of the moral dystopia that has been eating its way through America’s
institutions – education, legislatures, courts, media, and now this. The subsequent
decline in combat effectiveness, the resignations, the dismissals, and the loss
of military vocations are a small price to pay for the new world’s ultimate
vindication of the rationalization for the moral disorder that is sodomy.
While many repeal
advocates point to the integration of homosexual troops into the ranks of many
NATO countries’ armed forces as a “success,” they fail to
reflect upon the fact that none of the prospective adversaries of
the United States or NATO — such as Russia, China and Iran — has
followed suit. One wonders why.
The failure of many of those in public life, including senior military
officers, to rally to the defense of these men and their institution has a
name: trahsion des clercs. It is not
an honorable one, but they have earned it. The Senate may yet save the US
military from their dereliction, as hope remains that it will not pass the
repeal in the remaining two weeks of its lame duck session.
Robert Reilly has
worked in foreign policy, the military, and the arts. His most recent book is The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual
Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis.
