Obama wants "don't ask, don't tell repealed"

[Caeser23]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/....ap/index.html

b/c it will strenghten the military I thought he was all for gay rights.

if you serve with 110%, what you do in your private life is no concern to me

[Curtis(USAF)]

The main issue for me is that we have all these hoodlum kids coming in with the idea that "I'll join the military, and if I don't like it I'll just tell my commander that I kiss boys (Or girls, whatever)"

Screw that, this ain't Macdonald's hiring, even if the initial qualifications are basically the same. Once you're in, you're in. Welcome to the wonderful world of commitment. Welcome to joys of a binding, ironclad contract. Welcome to the real world.

Look, we integrated blacks in an era when many troops came from states that were actively segregated. We desegregated years before the rest of the country. We picked up women and we've almost fully integrated them. There aren't that many jobs where a woman simply cannot serve in anymore. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head is SOCOM jobs, and submarine service. The subs are mostly because it is simply too expensive to rip apart the submarines just to put in the necessary living space for females (Female bathrooms, showers, etc). Submarines are notoriously hard and expensive to modify. All the surface boats are already crewed out with females, a lady freind of mine just got out after serving on a destroyer. She wandered the world in an Arleigh Burke class tin can for four years. Can we integrate gays? Yes. Will there be issues? Yes. Will bad stuff happen? Unfortunately, hell yes. But it is doable. We're the Freakin' US military. There ain't nothing we can't do! And if we can't do it, we'll die trying anyways.

[GoSlash27]

Caeser,
According to the article you're both on the same page. And FWIW I agree fully with both of you.
I'm curious to see how long this thread stays open.

[Dilbert]

I remember talk several months ago of the Air Force top brass considering allowing gays in. My thought on the issue? As long as you do your job to the best of your ability I don't care what you do off duty.

[Wildalaska]

I'm too old to worry about where and when folks use their unmentionables and the military should let it rest.

If you get freaked out over some guy making gaga eyes at you (that happens to me a lot since I am Fabios twin, in essense) then you need to seek help

+1 barack

WildtoomuchworryingaboutsillinessAlaska TM

[Caeser23]

now that my coffee kicked in, I understand it I read it befroe as he didn't want gays in the military, oops....

[GoSlash27]

WA *is* one sexy beast! I'll give him that.

GoSlashIaintgotnohotasianwife27

[miboso]

WildAlaska,

since I am Fabios twin

Yeah, I saw the movie "Twins", I can guess which twin you would be.
mibosorryIjustcouldn'tresistso

[toybox99615]

the policy as it now is implemented is so ridiculous. Obama is willing to stand up ans say he is against it. Now we will see the richeous proclaim how evil Obama is for supporting gays. The flack will come from those who will never know how many of the 4,000 dead in Iraq while serving in the military would have been thrown out under the current policy.

[GoSlash27]

Every time this subject comes up, I'm pleasantly reminded how libertarian this community is. Thanks for being so cool!
/don't think this subject should be off limits for this forum as the members have repeatedly demonstrated maturity

GoSlashtotallygayforwildalaska27

[divemedic]

Welcome to joys of a binding, ironclad contract. Welcome to the real world.

While I agree that gays and women should be allowed to serve, the contract you sign with the military is only ironclad and binding upon the servicemember, not the military. That contract is so full of loopholes and exceptions, it is hardly a contract. More like indentured servitude.

Military service is hardly the real world, either.

I don't know if it has changed, but one of the problems I always had with the military was the way women were given preferential treatment. If they don't wish to deploy, they simply get pregnant with no repercussions.

A post in Hawaii was considered shore duty for men, but since it was not CONUS, it counted as Sea duty for women. Have they fixed that yet?

[Mainah]

I support gay rights, but I never served in the military. In a perfect world we'd all accept each other for who we are, but in a perfect world we wouldn't need the Marines.

[Danzig]

There are plenty of homosexual individuals serving very honorably in the military now. I think that it's high time that we let them be honest about who they are. Give them the respect that they have earned.

[Sarge]

Whether I liked :barf:bama's position or not, I wouldn't worry much about it. He'll change it two or three times between now and the convention and then probably again before the election. By the time he gets elected you won't know what the hell he stands for; sorta like when he votes 'present' on important legislation.

[toybox99615]

This might be a hot issue for McCain and his conservative supporters to deal with. It probably is a no win situation if he dares bring this issue up. The conservatives would never support allowing gays anywhere while the more liberal voter McCain hopes to rally might. Which side of the issue would generate more votes for McCain is his quandary.

[Unregistered]

I have never understood why we didn't want homosexuals in the military. I'd be happy with one of them dying instead of me. If they wanted to form their own units, I think it would be fine... kind of a fight all day, love all night approach to combat.

[ZeroJunk]

I see no reason why gays would need to announce their preference. Do they get anything from the disclosure. It's not like being guilty of murder and weighs on your mind until you confess is it? Who cares.

Do they have to look at everything in the whole world in the context of their gayness? Reminds me of another minority.

[CGSteve8718]

I think I agree with mostly everyone here, and I can't believe I agree with Obama !

I am pretty certain the Marine Corps still isn't fully desegregated amongst men and women in certain MOS's.

[toybox99615]

Zerojunk the issue is the Dishonorable Discharge that they receive if they are either discovered or openly admit it. They are not asking to get any special treatment. They are just asking to be treated equal to the others in the military.

Think of all the other things a person could be singled out for being including any number of religions that some others might not like and yet gay is they only thing that gets you removed from the service for something other than criminal behaviour. We now even give dispensations for some who have other issues in thier lives such as drug and criminal behaviours.

[WhyteP38]

Look, we integrated blacks in an era when many troops came from states that were actively segregated. We desegregated years before the rest of the country. We picked up women and we've almost fully integrated them. There aren't that many jobs where a woman simply cannot serve in anymore. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head is SOCOM jobs, and submarine service. The subs are mostly because it is simply too expensive to rip apart the submarines just to put in the necessary living space for females (Female bathrooms, showers, etc). Submarines are notoriously hard and expensive to modify. All the surface boats are already crewed out with females, a lady freind of mine just got out after serving on a destroyer. She wandered the world in an Arleigh Burke class tin can for four years. Can we integrate gays? Yes. Will there be issues? Yes. Will bad stuff happen? Unfortunately, hell yes. But it is doable. We're the Freakin' US military. There ain't nothing we can't do! And if we can't do it, we'll die trying anyways

I don't know what it's like for the Air Force, but at least for the Navy, this issue is not as simple as many people think. The ability to do your job is not the only part of your job. You also have to live and get along with your coworkers. Unit cohesion is not a requirement of the civilian workplace, but it's critical to the survival of a Navy ship.

Have we successfully integrated blacks into the military? Yes, but that's not the same issue. No one can do something black/white/asian/hispanic upon you. However, they can commit a homosexual act upon you.

Have we successfully integrated women into the military? Yes, but not all areas are equally successful. For example, mixed crew ships often have a high rate of nondeployable women due to pregnancy. I've seen stats of 30-40 percent of the female complement being undeployable shortly before a scheduled deployment. We currently evac females for the same reasons as we do males - illnesses, injuries, etc. - plus pregnancies. This is a major problem. In addition, women tend not to be able to handle many of the firefighting tasks that men can handle due to differences in physical strength. It's nice to think that you can have a dedicated firefighting team of all men to do those tasks, but what happens when your home is in the middle of the ocean and an onboard explosion takes out your team? Think USS Forestal. At that point, you need everyone you can get to be a firefighter.

Does the Navy report mixed crews as a success? Of course it does. Navy captains may get a lot of respect in the movies and TV, but they aren't powerful enough to tell Mr. and Ms. Congresspersons that he and she were wrong in forcing the Navy to implement the program. So it's "Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full."

Also, you still need separate facilities for the men and women for a reason. Because mixing naked male and female teens and 20-somethings in the same showers is generally a bad idea. Because the sexual drive is one of the most powerful drives humans have. "Horny as a sailor on shore leave" is not just an expression. It's a reality.

Gays are not more immune to strong sexual drives than straights. To allow gays to serve openly is no different than mixing men and women into the same intimate facilities.

And despite the ban on openly gay service, we still have major problems. When I was in, I was a legal officer (which is not a lawyer but basically a glorified paralegal). I had one case in which I had to administratively separate an individual for homosexual acts. During my interactions with the base JAG for guidance on how to handle the situation, I discovered that the problem of male rape was a significant one. The JAGs shared stories of senior gay officers forcing themselves on junior officers and junior enlisteds. On one ship, the Kearsarge, the problem was bad enough that it was nicknamed the Queerbarge.

"How come I've never heard about this?" I asked.

"Because your Mark-1, Mod-0 sailor wouldn't enlist if he thought he might be raped in his bunk," I was told. "It's bad PR."

None of this is to disparage gays, and if you look at what I wrote above, nothing in it disparages gays. It is to say that gays face the same drives as straights. It is to say that if mixing men and women in things such as shower facilities would cause problems, you'll get similar problems by allowing openly gay people to serve. It is to say that there already is a problem, and to make it worse doesn't make sense.

Can gays do a military task with honor? Yes, and many already have. But doing a military task with honor is not the bigger story. Unit cohesion is.

[Buzzcook]

It took a conservative administration to prove that women and gays could be effectively deployed in combat situations.
Kinda ironic that.

[Garand Illusion]

Although I am too old to serve in the military I don't see the problem with this either. From the military guys I know, curtisUSAF covered it very well.

If gay guys want to see me nekkid, they can hang out (no pun intended) in my health club locker room. Or get a job monitoring the security cams over the changing rooms at Mall stores.

And people younger than me tend to be even more OK with the whole concept.

[Jim March]

Shrug. The Spartans were universally bi. Didn't seem to hurt their fighting ability any .

[Shorts]

I see a lot "if they wanna look, I don't care" mentality. It goes way past that. Sexual-based crimes are very real and very common in the military and its a very big problem for unit cohesion as WhyteP38 said (DH was also Legal-O so we too heard many cases). Aside from the sexual physical crimes, there very well will be verbal harassment and might be a few cases of physical beat downs. I wouldn't count anything out. Been around the military long enough to know senseless things happen, both on deployment/cruise and in port. Do I care either way????...not really. I don't care until it affects me. Sure, probably a real out-of-sight out-of-mind way of putting it. But I've got other things to worry about.

AFN anyone?

[divemedic]

Unit cohesion is a code word for "We have people here who just don't like their kind." Whatever kind that me be, be it blacks, women, gays, or what have you. Perhaps the real problem here is not with gays, but with intolerant bigots.

Saying that gays should be prohibited from serving because one gay man committed rape makes as much sense as prohibiting guns because on gun owner murdered someone.