DADT

I remember being a 9 or 10 year old when the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” thing made the news. It was a high velocity buzz word or catch phrase that I didn’t quite “get” so I of course asked my dad about it.

“Dad, what’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?’

I could tell from my father’s consternation that he was trying hard not to tell me how he REALLY FELT, as he was aware he was talking to his impressionable son.

“Well, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ means that if you’re a gay person and you’re in the military, people can’t ‘ask’ if you’re gay, to try to throw you out, and you can’t ‘tell’ people you’re gay if you want to keep your job.” Which was probably the clearest way to explain that to a ten year old.

“That’s stupid, what does being gay have to do with being in the Army?” I said. Really. I really said that.

So fast forward about twenty years and here we are again, with DADT a hot button issue. President Obama’s latest attempt to solidify his presidency involves revoking DADT and allowing gays and lesbians (as well as all all the bisexual, transgendered folk of course) to serve openly in the United States military.

If you’re just joining us, he’s receiving twice as much opposition to this idea than he did with government-sponsored health care.

I’ve been hearing a lot of debate on this on all the media outlets and I’m just stunned that in 2010 people (Republicans mostly) think that being gay and serving in the military is going to be a “distraction.”

On NPR’s “Talk of the Nation”, some congressman who was against the DADT repeal came on and said something to the effect that “gays would cause a distraction” and he backed that up by saying he had done two tours in the Middle East and knew the stressors of combat. Having gays out in the open would defeat the morale of soldiers.

Which is all well and good I guess, because I know morale is so high in Iraq and Afghanistan for our fighting soldiers. “Hey gang, we got us another ping-pong table!”

Look, I can’t go into details, but let me assure you that I have first hand knowledge of military life. I’ve known dudes who were as gay as the day is long and did their jobs admirably while serving. Sure, once they got out they came out of the closet, but it wasn’t like anyone was surprised by this.

“Dude, did you know Mark was gay?”

“….You didn’t?!”

Whether you’re gay or not, the only thing that should matter in the military world is your work ethic. No one is going to get trapped in a foxhole and end up getting raped by a gay dude; there’s too much other shit going on for that to go down.

There’s also the risk that gays would be targeted for hazing by hetro members of the military. Knowing what I know about the military and it’s junior enlisted members (not to say senior members wouldn’t be swept up in this type of behavior too, possibly, but face facts, it’s always the idiot 18-21 year olds that fuck up in such a massive way) this is a high risk for openly gay members. As hard as each branch tries, acts of hazing/pranks still run rampant in units. I can see this, coupled with the fact that members are allowed to be openly gay, being a huge problem.

I can see DADT being repealed and no one coming out.

But not repealing this archaic policy is problematic as well; do we want to tell our grandkids we’ve gone so long without allowing gays to serve their country because we were afraid of getting raped, or ourselves being turned gay? We were scared of gays? We might as sleep with the lights on too, for fear the boogie monster might be in our closets.

Our military goes into the most dangerous places on earth and fights hand to hand with the nastiest, craziest, suicidal people in the world, and we’re afraid of letting Todd the Hairdresser work behind a desk and order blue pens for the Army? We can’t have Lucy the Construction Worker working on trucks in the Motor Pool?

Again, take it from me: military life consists of 10% if what you actually signed up to do, and 90% cleaning shit, paper work, or smoking cigarettes. We’re not constantly under sniper fire or blowing shit up.

There’s literally no reason not to allow ANYONE who’s physically able to do the job into the military - regardless how they spend their weekend.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 1:20 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.