After a great conversation with Jeff Key on the show last saturday, I am absolutely convinced (well I have been convinced for a long time and now just enhanced convinced) that DADT makes no sense anymore and the United States military needs to allow openly gay soldiers to serve now--just like other countries do. Jeff was a marine, for god's sake, around big tough hetro marine guys, he told them he was gay long before he was discharged, and they still would have fought alongside him and trusted him--they appeared on national television to say so.
It's not only time to allow gays to openly serve, but also to commit to full protection for them in every unit if there is indeed any threat to them from other soldiers; to promise automatic dishonorable discharge and prosecution for any soldier found to be violating the civil rights or safety of gay soldiers; and to make it clear to every soldier that sexual preference means absolutely nothing as far as they are concerned. To do anything less at this point in time is to continue an immoral policy, and (using, for the moment, the language and logic of the right) to risk the "national security" that proponents of the Global War on Terror constantly evoke. When Truman desegregated the military, many people, most infamously General Omar Bradley, insisted it was not yet time to do so.
I invite anyone who disagrees with this to contact Jeff Key or Gary Barkley.
1 comment:
Amen. Will it create tension and possibly some violence against gays in the military? Probably, in the short term. Integration in the military was no less problematic. But you don't get over that hurdle by putting your head in the sand.
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