This week's column is so gay!
I'm writing about gays in the military this week. We've had the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy now for over a decade. That's a long enough adjustment period. Bill Clinton could've signed an Executive Order like Harry Truman did when he racially integrated the services. Of course, such a move at the time probably would've doomed his presidency.
We've come a long way since then. One state has legalized gay marriage. Civil unions have caught on. Gay characters and themes have appeared in literature, television and motion pictures.
I just think it's time we dropped the policy and allow gays to serve openly. I don't look at this as a moral issue like General Peter Pace does. If I did, the military wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
The U.S. Navy has had a practice of providing condoms to sailors going on shore leave at various ports of call. Anyone who knows anything about sailors knows that when they're on leave, they're not out looking for particularly "moral" things to do.
This is a dangerous new world post 9-11, or so we're told. If that's the case, then we don't have the luxury of casting people out of our stretched thin military for ridiculous pretenses like their sexual orientation.
It's like anything else in America. We're free to believe what we want. Joe SixPack is free to believe that women can't do jobs as well as men or that women shouldn't be voting. Sam Skinhead is free to believe that Jews control the American government and that we'd be better off without blacks in this country. And old military commanders are free to believe that homosexual acts and/or homosexuality is immoral. But i think it's immaterial to what we do as a nation. We could hold any belief that we want. But we draw the line at discrimination.
Gays are serving now. Makes no sense kicking out people we've invested millions of dollars of training in.
Anyway, that's my take on it....
We've come a long way since then. One state has legalized gay marriage. Civil unions have caught on. Gay characters and themes have appeared in literature, television and motion pictures.
I just think it's time we dropped the policy and allow gays to serve openly. I don't look at this as a moral issue like General Peter Pace does. If I did, the military wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
The U.S. Navy has had a practice of providing condoms to sailors going on shore leave at various ports of call. Anyone who knows anything about sailors knows that when they're on leave, they're not out looking for particularly "moral" things to do.
This is a dangerous new world post 9-11, or so we're told. If that's the case, then we don't have the luxury of casting people out of our stretched thin military for ridiculous pretenses like their sexual orientation.
It's like anything else in America. We're free to believe what we want. Joe SixPack is free to believe that women can't do jobs as well as men or that women shouldn't be voting. Sam Skinhead is free to believe that Jews control the American government and that we'd be better off without blacks in this country. And old military commanders are free to believe that homosexual acts and/or homosexuality is immoral. But i think it's immaterial to what we do as a nation. We could hold any belief that we want. But we draw the line at discrimination.
Gays are serving now. Makes no sense kicking out people we've invested millions of dollars of training in.
Anyway, that's my take on it....
Comments