Sunday, December 5, 2010

DADT and Oz


            I’m fascinated by watching politicians wiggle and squirm when the curtain they have hidden behind on substantive issues is ripped away.  The spectacle is positively Wizard of Oz-ian.

            Though examples are legion, the most recent is also one of the most glaring; the dance of obfuscation that conservative congressmen from both parties have recently engaged in over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

            A little history might be helpful.  Before DADT became official policy in the 1990’s, conservatives from both parties spoke as little as possible about the subject of gays in the military, but when they did, it was generally along the lines of  “Homosexual men can’t (or won’t) fight the way straight men will.  No American soldier should be forced to share a foxhole with a homosexual.”

            There was, and remains, a broad swath of the American poplulace that accepted that line of thought as a given.  Homosexuality was (is) an offense against God.  To that sector of the population, homosexuals would, if allowed into the close confines of military life,  surely contaminate our fighting men.  For these folks, it was a safe assumption that if you put a gay man in a foxhole with a straight man, the straight man would have to sight his weapon with one eye, while keeping the other eye on his foxhole mate to make sure his hands stayed on his weapon.

            Though it seems a distant memory now, that’s a pretty apt description of the arguments advanced by the opponents of DADT in the ‘90’s.  When the policy was put in place anyway, they grudgingly applauded the fact that it still made being open about one’s sexuality grounds for dismissal from the service.  What they quickly realized, however, was that DADT also provided a much more politically correct position for them.  Now they could deplore homosexuality, cheer the fact that openness about it resulted in mustering out, but do that privately—only for the constituents who wanted to hear it—while publically jumping behind an Oz-ian curtain and saying “Hey, we’re just supporting the policy our military leaders have adopted.”  Some of them, John McCain springs to mind, went so far as to say they would support DADT so long as the military wanted it.

            Oops! Turns out the military doesn’t want it anymore—in fact, wants it rescinded immediately.  This was the message Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and vice-Chairman Gen. James Cartwright delivered last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee.  According to Cartwright, American service members “think in terms of mission accomplishment and look beyond issues of race, religion, gender, and, frankly, sexual orientation.” His choice of words there is telling, as much for what they allude to as what they say.  Religion has never been an issue with regard to military service, but race and gender have.  Blacks and women were historically excluded from mainstream service, and there was a huge hue and cry from the same segments of the population so adamant about gays in the military when blacks and women were fully incorporated.  Amazingly, the military’s fighting capacity was not diminished one iota by either.

            The defense secretary and the Chiefs were reacting to a survey of over 100,000 active duty service men and women, the gist of which was, do you consider gays in the military a problem?  The very substantial majority response was NO. 

            So what does McCain do?  First he announces that the survey was “faulty,” though he provides no indication of what in it was bad.  Then he announces that he would only support repeal of DADT after a series of 13 hearings, the focus of which would be to elicit enlisted men’s views on the subject.  (Though not responding directly to Senator McCain, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey noted that the military is not a democracy.) Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell later announced that he would “follow Senator McCain’s lead” on the subject.  The rest of the Republican leadership fell quickly in line, as did Democrats like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

            What seems clear here is that DADT is not a military policy issue, it’s a cultural issue and when you get right down to it, a religious issue.  For the born agains among us, homosexuality is a sin, and when politicians oppose repeal of DADT, their real reason for doing so has nothing to do with military readiness; it has to do with appeasing the most religious among their constituents—or, in some cases, with reflecting their own religious beliefs. 
           
            Is there anything wrong with a politican voting his conscience or the consciences of his constituents?  Absolutely not.  But let’s call it what it is and stop hiding behind Oz-ian curtains like military effectiveness.  Gay men and women have been serving in the military for as long as we have had a military.  In proportions at least equal to that of straights, their service has been honorable and their fighting record admirable.  Removing DADT isn’t going to increase the number of gay men and women in service; it will simply allow them to serve without lying about—or at least concealing—who they are.

            Something that has always puzzled me about religious objections to gays in the military: because God couldn’t possibly create something as heinous as a homosexual, religious folks are adamant that being gay is a choice individuals make.  If that’s true, why would allowing people who have made that choice to admit it cause people who haven’t made the choice to suddenly decide to do so?  Not sure there’s a logic to follow here.
            

1 comment:

  1. This post touches on why focusing on DADT was a brilliant political move: it sits at the intersection of a host of broader issues. The full argument is here: http://noompa.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/the-political-brilliance-of-dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal/

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