Don't ask, Don't tell

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military would be the right thing to do.  

Now I served in the military for twenty-three years, retiring after a squadron command, and one thing I know is that the further up the ladder one climbs in his military career, the more political the environment.  This is especially true after an individual starts pinning on stars and finds himself in Washington. In giving his testimony, I can assure you that Admiral Mullen was speaking as a politician, parroting the position of those in the administration, and not as a warrior concerned with the welfare of his men.

Admiral Mullen stated in his testimony that the policy now in place is forcing young men and women to lie about who they are in order to serve.  He could not be more wrong. Columnists Clarence Page unknowingly framed the argument when he stated that men and women should be punished for what they do, not who they are.  The current policy has nothing to do with forcing anyone to lie about who they are, but has everything to do with forbearance in letting them conceal what they do. What they do is rightfully viewed as a perversion by most of their fellow soldiers.

Whether one believes in evolutionism or creation, the human body is designed to perform a certain way.  No one would observe someone sniffing cocaine and conclude that the nose was designed for the purpose of ingesting cocaine into the lungs. By the same token, no one would align two naked humans of the same sex and conclude that they were designed to fit together sexually.  In both cases, the acts would be a perversion of purpose.  Homosexual behavior is banned because it’s immoral, as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said before he was shown the door for violating political correctness. The discrimination is based on actions, not inherited traits. 

As for media treatment of this issue, G.K. Chesterton had it exactly right when he said: “Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds. ….modern journalism has a standing fear. It will call the action anything else – mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful.” Unsurprisingly journalists have jumped on the civil rights bandwagon, snatching numbers involving homosexuals who serve and those who are separated out of thin air to support their case, despite the fact that there is not one scintilla of evidence to show that homosexuality is genetic. 

Since the 1991 Tailhook incident, women have moved into roles that were traditionally off limits and the results have been a degradation of combat effectiveness.  Discounting the loss of manpower due to pregnancy, the biggest problem that the services face today is fraternization between the sexes within the chain of command and the inevitable resentment due to favoritism.  Politicians have turned the military into a social experiment, forcing men and women to serve for extended periods in close proximity in the intense environment of deployment, expecting no fall out.  It hasn’t worked.  The military has its hands full dealing with this issue , but as always, it  has adapted and overcome. Now the campaign is to throw another social experiment with a sexual component into the equation. 

Surveys show a majority of service personnel oppose lifting the ban, and at least 10 percent say they would not re-enlist. More than 1,150 retired generals and admirals have signed a letter opposing this radical change.  They know that currently our military is the finest in the world, and anything that even hints of detracting from its effectiveness should be rejected out of hand.  Serving one’s country is a privilege, not a right.