He can and will be fired for violating DADT.

He can AND SHOULD be court-martialed, imprisoned, for using his military rank and service for a political cause.

He can say “I’m Dan Choi and I’m gay and I think DADT is wrong” No problem

He cannot say “I’m LT Dan Choi, platoon leader in Iraq, currently in the ARMY NG and I’m gay and I think DADT is wrong”

Dan Choi has just received his walking papers. A month and a half after Dan Choi publicly announced his homosexuality and the formation of a support group for openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender West Point graduates, the first lieutenant……

To this day I find it amusing when a person thinks that just because a gay person may look at them it means they want to have sex with them.

aceinstall on May 8, 2009 at 1:29 PM

To this day, I am still perplexed why everyone was so offended when I accidentally walked into the girls locker room when I was in high school.

I’m sorry, I’ve never been naked with an openly gay person before. You’re a better man than I am Gunga Din.

Please get it through your head. We’re not talking about specifically inviting new gay crew members. We’re talking a situation where you’re told: you know that guy who you served with for years and he was nothing but a dependable friendly comrade with no problems whatsoever etc? Well, he’s gay.

radiofreevillage on May 8, 2009 at 12:56 PM

No, radiofreevillage, that’s not what we’re talking about. First of all, the dependable friendly comrade’s buddies probably already “know” (or suppose) that he’s gay. Few if any of them care.

What we are talking about is gay radical activists forcing confrontations on the military. Discrimination and harassment cases, for example, covering both the workplace and recreation/family life.

Today disgruntled junior personnel cannot accuse their seniors of discriminating against them because they’re gay — because no one is supposed to know whether they are or not. Once they are “out,” if you will, they will be able to make such accusations about discrimination. If you think there are junior folks who wouldn’t misuse such allegations, to deflect attention from their own professional shortcomings, you obviously have never served in the military.

The kids wouldn’t be making their decisions in a vacuum. Gay activist groups would be all over them, as women’s groups in the ’80s and ’90s were all over female servicemembers, encouraging them to take it as discrimination when they were assessed to have failed at meeting professional standards.

Anyone from the Navy (my service) remembers Kara Hultgreen, the aviation lieutenant who, if I recall correctly, was allowed to remain in carrier aviation in spite of an astonishing seven “downs” (performance black marks) in training (five more than any male washout had ever been allowed) — and who eventually crashed her jet and killed herself. A key reason why she was moved along through the system was the atmosphere of presumed guilt in Naval aviation, regarding discrimination against females. Officers had seen their bosses and peers forced to retire, denied promotion, reduced in retirement rank, and raked over the coals in Congressional hearings because of professional discrimination cases that were brought and prosecuted with the material assistance of feminist activist groups.

I’m not defending the decision to let an unsafe aviator stay in the community. But to suggest that our military leaders ought to be faced with the choice of gundecking professional assessments, or having discrimination charges brought against them if they accurately evaluate someone from a politically protected group who isn’t hacking it, is vilely dismissive and cynical.

Of course gay activists will seek political scalps in the military via this method. It is stupid to say they wouldn’t, when they go after such scalps in every other walk of life. The principle gay activists operate from is a demand for positive affirmation from everyone. A mere absence of hostility is not enough: there has to be positive affirmation. In fact, they equate the absence of positive affirmation with hostility.

They will force showdowns, such as demanding that Navy chaplains affirm their support of homosexuality, as a measure of whether gay sailors have access to “tolerant religious worship” when they are deployed for months at a time. It will not be good enough for chaplains to simply not address that topic (and in 20 years I never once heard a chaplain say anything about it). Gay activists will find a way to force them to declare themselves — probably by quoting the Bible and demanding that a chaplain comment on the passages relating to homosexual behavior.

A challenge of this kind would get little to no hearing in the civilian world, where there is always a choice of religious venues. But of course, on a deployed ship, religious worship choices are much more limited. Keep in mind, however, we are not talking about gay sailors having to hear chaplains preach against homosexuality, or ever even talk about it. But anyone who thinks a gay activist lawyer can’t twist the restricted situation of a deployed ship into one putatively “hostile” to his client is, I am afraid, clueless.

Some chaplains would have no trouble making politically correct statements in this regard. But others would — and provoking the showdown with them, and members of the crew who hold the same beliefs, is (deep breath, people) prejudicial to good order and discipline. It’s also antithetical to the very freedom of religious thought our Navy is supposed to be fighting to preserve for us.

The same day the UCMJ was changed to allow gays to serve openly, gay activists would be ready with their demands for gay pride days sponsored by the military, gay affirmation events sponsored by Moral, Welfare, and Rec (MWR), gay-oriented marketing in the AAFES system that runs the post/base Exchanges, accommodation for gay couples in military housing, and a “positive environment for gays” in barracks and the workplace, which might include anything from dressing in drag for steel beach picnics to incorporating gay themes in the Fo’c’s’le Follies.

Again, the great majority of gays would have no such agenda. But this isn’t about them. Most of them are not even pushing for a change to the UCMJ or DADT.

Most servicewomen have been embarrassed and irritated by feminist activism, preferring to meet standards, do their jobs, and as we say in the military, cooperate and graduate. Similarly, my sense is that most gay servicemembers would rather just get the job done, serve to the best of their ability, and not be the peg that sticks out and begs to be pounded down.

(That’s how it works in the military, and if you don’t like it, don’t join. Keeping focused on the mission, and not on your precious adorable self, is how the military gets done all the hard stuff you couldn’t possibly do, in a civilian work environment. Notably, servicemembers also sacrifice more for each other, tolerate more from each other, put each other before themselves, and give their lives for each other more than in any civilian situation except, probably, firefighting.)

But there will always be the “litigation McGuffins” — the walking pretexts for charges and lawsuits, the disgruntled and resentful who creep into every corner of life; and it does neither the military nor our national security any good to open the door wide to their teans of activist lawyers. It’s a long nightmare of prejudice to good order, discipline, morale, and mission focus — just waiting to happen.

radiofreevillage on May 8, 2009 at 12:53 PM

Unless you have access to all the documentation on all servicemembers dismissed you have nothing to back up your “zero”

It seems more likely that it may be easier to use the justification that they are gay than going thru the process of documenting that they are general malcontents and PIAs.

Making room for gay crewmembers is a nightmare. They would need their own showers – single occupancy of course, not group showers.

No, they wouldn’t. They are already on those ships taking shower with everybody. Please get it through your head. We’re not talking about specifically inviting new gay crew members. We’re talking a situation where you’re told: you know that guy who you served with for years and he was nothing but a dependable friendly comrade with no problems whatsoever etc? Well, he’s gay.

You have to wonder what percentage of the ones who get removed are either disciplinary problems for other reasons

No, we really don’t. The answer is zero. If these people had disciplinary problems that merited a removal, this is what the removal would be based on.

I see this as Progress.
Folks this is time to celebrate. Ther is no pain in these changes we can count on.

Mormon Doc on May 8, 2009 at 1:50 AM

Countdown til we see topless pics of Mormon Doc…

A few weeks ago, Lt. Dan Choi came on Rachel Maddow’s show to announce he was gay. Part of his problem was that him not being allowed to say that out loud ran contrary to what he said he had been thought at West Point.
The sooner we move away fro…

Former squid here, and to be clear I could give a rat’s rear end about a person’s sexual preference.

That being said, the primary concern on a ship is space – there’s just not that much of it. When women were brought aboard sleeping quarters and showers had to be re-assigned. In some cases work spaces were re-assigned to make room leading to reduced readiness. Making room for gay crewmembers is a nightmare. They would need their own showers – single occupancy of course, not group showers. They would need individual bunks. After all we separate men and women, and so we would separate gays.

On land where there is plenty of room, knock yourselves out, but don’t turn our fighting ships into cruise liners.

Onus on May 8, 2009 at 9:14 AM

I concur with this. Having spent time on both an FFG & a CVN, plus a two-week exchange tour on a 688, saying that there isn’t much space is an understatement. You get a rack (bunk) just big enough for you to lie out on, but not enough headroom to sit up. There is a space for your gear under the rack, about 6″ deep and the size of the mattress. You have to raise the mattress to access it. Your laundry bag with all your dirty clothes hangs off the pole beside your rack. There is a community shower and head (toilet) with no partitions between the toilets or showers.

The berthing compartment can be a difficult place, especially in a rolling sea and hot weather. It’s crowded, can get smelly and with 20-40 men all cramped together, requires a LOT of discipline.

There are serious issues already with women aboard ship. Someone ALWAYS gets pregnant, every deployment. Then there are the issues of a small group of women and a LARGE group of men.

The DADT policy works, as long as both sides respect the idea. However, it has been my experience that EVERY time a gay sailor was outed, it was because he or she CHOSE to out themselves to make some political point, or to keep from having to deploy or to just get out of the service.

We had a similar situation when women were first admitted to ships and squadrons, where some decided they didn’t want to play anymore, so got pregnant to get out of the military. At that time (the policy has since changed) women who became pregnant were considered unfit for duty and discharged.

I have served along gay men. I had no problems with them because neither was a “militant” gay. They served honorably, did their jobs, and that right well, and were squared away sailors. Under those circumstances the system works.

When someone brings a political axe to grind, or an agenda of “Look at ME! I’m GAY!” then the problems start.

I wish I had a good answer for this problem, but I suspect that the situation will have no good answer, regardless of the best intentions of all involved.

respects,

That being said, the primary concern on a ship is space – there’s just not that much of it. When women were brought aboard sleeping quarters and showers had to be re-assigned. In some cases work spaces were re-assigned to make room leading to reduced readiness. Making room for gay crewmembers is a nightmare. They would need their own showers – single occupancy of course, not group showers. They would need individual bunks. After all we separate men and women, and so we would separate gays.

On land where there is plenty of room, knock yourselves out, but don’t turn our fighting ships into cruise liners.