A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on February 5th, 2010 in US News

This post is the fallout from a Facebook discussion. The issue at hand had to do with “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” (DADT) and its purpose. After all, no soldier, sailor, marine, or airman’s job is to get laid for their country. So serving in the military is not inherently dependent on sexual orientation.

In concept, DADT was a step forward for gay rights. When I signed my enlistment papers, I was asked, point blank, if I was or ever had been gay. If I’d have said, “yes,” I wouldn’t have been allowed to serve, no matter what. For comparison, a person could also be disqualified for being a drug addict, but in the case of drugs, it could be waivered. Not so for being gay.

The idea was that, under the old rule, a person had to actively lie to be both gay and in the military. If we just didn’t ask people; then it would simply be a lie of omission – since you could still be discharged for being gay. I suppose, in the rank of things, lies of omission are less onerous than lies of commission, but they are both lies.

But in the general course of things, a person’s sexual orientation shouldn’t even pertain to their job…so DADT was a perfect answer, right? Yeah, if you totally ignore the nature of life in the military. When I was on board the USS Saipan I slept in a berthing compartment with well over a hundred other men. We saw each other naked, we saw each other in the bathroom, and – if I can be blunt here – we knew when the guy in the next bunk was masturbating. It’s sort of difficult not to know. Now, what other job have you ever had that you knew when your coworkers were pleasuring themselves?

But it’s more than just that. As a work-center supervisor, I was told that I could not allow my men to hang up photos of women that they had ripped out of Playboy because it might force someone to reveal their sexual orientation. Just telling everyone that made them all wonder about the guy next to them. As far as I know, no one in our shop was gay, but it was a valid consideration.

But here’s the thing: At one point, I was cleaning up and I found a gay porn mag in the head (toilet room). If I had known who it belonged to I would have been required to report them to the Master-at-Arms and they would have been prosecuted and thrown out of the Navy, losing all of their veteran benefits in the process. If I failed to do so, I could have been prosecuted in exactly the same manner for failing to uphold the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Another point: While I was serving on the Saipan a ranking officer who deployed with us was thrown out of the Navy because he was forcing some of the enlisted men that worked for him to pleasure him sexually. Not a single one could actually lodge a complaint because, if they told the Master-at-Arms that they had actually had sex with another man, even if it was coerced, then they would be thrown out for being gay. So the DADT policy not only failed to protect my fellow sailors (who may or may not have been gay), it actively promoted this predator’s ability to control his victims.

I can also tell you that a large number of my fellow sailors hit the nearest whore-house every time we pulled into port. Anyone who didn’t go with them was suspect…unless they were known to have a wife or girlfriend back home. Anyone who didn’t fit in was subjected to ridicule and harassment.

Could a complaint be lodged and the harassment stopped? Well, it isn’t that simple. In a perfect world, yes. In the world we live in, supervisors can actually be the people who instigate harassment. So a formal complaint can actually be a risk to someone’s life or well-being.

For all of these reasons, DADT does not work, and it is not effective. The idea was that DADT would let gay people serve with honor. It hasn’t worked out that way. That’s why it needs to be repealed.

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