Don't Ask, Don't Tell

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Well, it doesn't make sense if you look at it any other way, but I suppose he could have been saying something that just doesn't make sense.



I was in the navy, so that one's new to me. But it sounds pretty much par for the course.

There are uniform regulations, defined grooming standards, and rules against sexual harassment, which include 'creating an unprofessional and/or uncomfortable working environment'.


And 30-35 year olds are held to lower standards than 20-25 year olds.


You might have a point for something like the infantry, and I can't really speak to that since I've never been there. But a lot of the stuff I did was not particularly dependent on physical strength/stamina.


It would be difficult to be a drag queen in uniform.....

Seriously, though, that would fall under 'creating a hostile working environment', and wouldn't fly.


Possibly not even that. The military has rules against 'bringing disrepute' to the service, so I very much doubt they would endorse cross-dressing in public.

You illustrate my point perfectly. If you allow gays to serve but impose standards of decorum, I can see that being a messy gray area that needs to be worked out. Gay rights groups will scream that it's oppression and that it's a double standard (likely so...I see a lot of bizarre stuff straight people do and nobody would make a fuss), and where do you really draw the line anyhow?

That's the hard part.

"Openly gay" does not mean flaunting their sexuality. It simply means that they'll have the right to disclose their sexuality without fear of retribution.



You seem to be suggesting that allowing open disclosure would immediately render most homosexual servicemen incapable of maintaining professional decorum in the workplace. As things stand, it is entirely acceptable - for example - for a straight soldier to discuss his wife and loved ones affectionately with another soldier. Denying homosexuals the same rights suggests that it in fact the straight servicemen who are incapable of professionalism. Maybe we should ban insecure straight men from the military instead.



Such decorum is already expected of every professional soldier in the western world, gay or straight.



If a course of action is the correct one, how difficult the path may be is irrelevant.



I'm not sure where this idea of resentment comes from. Women are simply incapable of matching the physical feats of their male counterparts. The evidence for this is best observed at, for example, the Olympic Games. In terms of professional behaviour and role performance, women must meet the same expectation as the men.



Physical fitness is important, but marginal differences in maximum physical ability is hardly important in the modern military. If you're going to suggest that men in the forces resent the frail, pampered women, I'm afraid you'll need a little bit more than conjecture.



If the army were the equivalent of a college campus then you might have a point about virile young men being around vulnerable young women, but that simply is not the case. The key aspect of military training is self-discipline. They aren't there to socialise, they're being trained for warfare. Do you honestly believe the army doesn't know how to sort out a few horny teens?



You're actually expecting us to believe that allowing gay men and women in the military the right to say 'actually, I'm not straight' is going to lead to an overly effeminate queen mincing around the battlefield, complaining about broken nails and demanding the right to wear a dress? I'm fairly certain that anyone signing up for military service is at least capable of understanding there are strict rules and regulations which govern dress code and behaviour.

There should be no room for discrimination in the military. If a simple announcement that you're gay causes hostility then the responsibility lies with the aggressor, not with the person who 'came out'. Blaming gays for the attitudes of homophobic colleagues is blindingly stupid.



Serving openly in an environment where closed-minded bigots put their own agenda before that of their unit highlights the need for education in the US, not just in the military. Your entire argument only shows your own ignorance on the subject matter, as well as your own closed-minded attitude towards homosexuality. Either you accept that gays should have full equal rights, or you're one of those bigots too. In 2010, this shouldn't even be a subject for debate.

That is, of course, your definition. I've seen what some gay people perceive to be "openly gay" and they are basically flaunting their lifestyle in the face of others around them. So, we must define what we really mean by "openly gay" so there is no confusion about the issue.



In time, perhaps so. But we must acknowledge that the gay community is an extreme minority of the population and most people are likely not going to be comfortable next to gays and lesbians until AFTER they get to know them as people. In this reality it is prudent for the gay/lesbian to keep it to themselves so that their peers can get to know them without their gay/lesbian status being the first thing they learn about them. I find most stereotypical perceptions of gays and lesbians do not hold up when a person is confronted with first-hand knowledge of an actual gay/lesbian. However, when the sexual orientation angle is brought up first, then everything is filtered by these prejudices they perceive about such people.



Irrelevant, perhaps. Important to deal with wisely, not irrelevant.



The point is that it does create resentment. Certainly, the average man can lift more weight than an average woman, but I also advocate working smart, not hard, and using appropriate tools. Still, this is true in both military and civilian circles. For a given age group, there is no reason for why at the annual physical a woman does not have to meet the same minimum sit ups, push ups (military style, not on the knees) and 2-mile run as a man WITHOUT lowering the standard for men so all can pass. I've seen women in proper physical condition. They can do proper push ups, sit ups and run just as fast and long as their male counterpart with no problems. Performance maximums might differ, but minimums do not.

Likewise, I've seen women soldiers get preferred treatment (better equipment/gear for adverse weather, etc.) because they were women while the men had to make do with the bare minimum. There is no excuse for that. I've seen women expected to do less work than their male counterparts. That creates resentment.

In the civilian sector, road crews were notorious for this for a while. Women hired but did nothing but hold the signs...never any hard manual labor. Thanks to some redefinition of "equal opportunity" by the courts, states can make it clear to female applicants that they WILL have to do the same work as their male counterparts and if they can't they'll be let go. Now I see the women on work crews doing the same manual labor as the guys (and they look more capable of it too), which I applaud.



Classic Aspie viewpoint.

I agree in principle, but let's be real. So much of the military environment is all about socialization, and I believe you are aware of that. It's not as simple as you propose.



No. My position is that if you like to have same-sex relations, I really don't want to nor need to know that about you. In time, I may come to know that about you, but once you put it on display...even with the act of general disclosure, it's out there, and it can be a source of discomfort. Let me (and others) get to know you for who you are. The gay issue will likely come out in its due time. Once I know you as a person, dealing with your being homosexual will be much easier. When you're a stranger, your announcing your being gay makes me ask, "Why did he/she feel a need to tell me, a total stranger, that about himself/herself?"



Agreed, but there are things a gay/lesbian can do in the workplace that creates discomfort with their co-workers. Believe it or not, most people DO NOT want to know about each other's sex lives/habits. Shoving this in their face before you develop a level of social intimacy with them is inappropriate.



I am not ignorant or closed-minded. I am keenly aware of the complexity of the issue. Yes, closed-mined bigots are a problem, but there are a lot of people who have various positions on what should constitute "full equal rights" and what should not. You will never get society to agree that gays/lesbians can have equality in every matter in life. Hence the debate on the issue.

zer0: Please describe, in specific terms, what you mean by "flaunting," and tell me if you think heterosexual servicemen are or are not "flaunting" their lifestyles. I believe you will find that you are nurturing a double standard.

I'm not denying that. That is the complexity of the issue. You can't expect to allow gays and lesbians to be as open about their sexuality as heterosexuals have been without there being some serious blow back.

Perhaps the wise course is to say everyone needs to practice discretion when discussing matters that polite society would consider "private." How successful that policy would be is an unknown.

A lot of people seem to look at this in terms of what might be ideal. I'm looking at it from what is pragmatic and realistic. The ideal will not be accomplished overnight, and what one person thinks is ideal may not be what everyone sees as ideal.

There are and should be standards of decorum.

Sexual harassment has a lot to do with making people uncomfortable. Saying 'I'm gay' isn't enough, but going on and on about details of a homosexual love life will make people uncomfortable.

I think your gray area fits into 'yellow light' behavior (as the training videos put it) that is sometimes acceptable and sometimes not. We already have that area to deal with anyway.


If they throw a hissy fit because the military won't let them get all gay-pride-parade in the military, I think very few people will care.

First of all, you are positing an assumption as fact. What constitutes "serious" blow back? How can we be sure that it will exist at all? The anecdotal evidence of a few malconents is balanced by the anecdotal evidence of gay and lesbian members of the armed forces who have faced no problems from their colleagues.



For a free speech advocate you have suddenly found a framework to impose self-censorship. When a heterosexual man tells me about his wife, he is, "sharing." When I tell him about my partner, I am, "flaunting." Polite society has no business deciding what is appropriate. This is a matter for military law which, like all law, must conform to appropriate constitutional standards.



I agree with you in the first and third statements, and I do not deny your claim in the second.

But that does not mean that the military can shield itself from scrutiny, or fail to comply with an order lawfully imposed upon it.

really?


....really?!?



..... ..... .....


really?


none of the arguments i've seen against allowing homosexuals to serve, openly, in the military in this thread have really made sense.

who's worried about soldiers showing up to battle in drag? first, M*A*S*H was not a documentary. second, how pissed would you be if you were overrun by a company of americans in drag? i don't see how this issue would actually come up and i don't see the problem even if it did. my bdus may be different than they acus worn today, but i don't recall either of them coming with skirt option. dress uniforms sometimes have a skirt option but i don't see how a male soldier wearing a skirt in an environment where a female soldier would be authorized the same skirt causes a real issue to anyone except the soldier-in-drag (it takes big balls to be gay in the american military and that can't be a comfortable tuck) and any nearby soldiers who are offended by a man in a skirt.

you don't want to be subjected to scary scary gay-sex stories? so... maybe a rule that disallows sex stories because a lot of people are uncomfortable hearing about other people's sexploits? wait, current equal-opportunity standards (i've given the damn EO presentation enough to know) already prohibits such discussion? oh. well i guess that covers that complaint in feces, then, doesn't it?

women are held to different PT standards because they're physically different? .....as homosexual men aren't physically distinguishable from heterosexual men, how is this even applicable?

homosexuals are a minority group? people discriminate against minorities? so our solution is................... ...continued discrimination?

men in uniform like to act gay and you're worried that the guy you've been "sharing fireguard" with on your last field exercise didn't feel ashamed that he enjoyed it?

how terrifying.

obviously, the solution to the problem of ignorant intolerance is to remove the offending entity.

i think people just disagree on which is the offending entity, the homosexual or the homophobe.

if you want to respond to anything in this post, i ask that you answer this one question, as well. which do you find more offensive, the homosexual or the homophobe?

I understand that in history, Americans where conditioned into rejecting what isn't the social norm. Being different was a burden and for that you where discriminated against. In the 21st century, I believe with the advent of more information, better understanding.. we've reached the point of individualism of each person's own uniqueness. Does it interfere with your life? or does a discriminatory social policy reflect the ignorance of ones society with the reflection of making someone else's life alittle bit harder ? This is the question I grappled with, and the conclusion should be obvious that It's irrelevant to have this as a policy. Theirs already codes and conducts on how a solider is to act, and I feel society's tolerance of others mean's we're advancing ourselves for the better. It isn't progressive liberal social dogma, it's just a class of people who don't want to be discriminated against. You can't hate them for that.. and I'm a cultural right-wing Christian.

This thread made me LOL. Are all these big tough American soldiers so terribly scared of getting bummed in the trenches? Are all these drag-queens really going to be prancing around the battlefield in skirts and makeup? Because obviously all the female soldiers go into combat in court shoes and stockings so the men who want to dress as women are going to do that too.

Grow up already.

The military controls what sort of earrings a female is allowed in uniform and exactly how long and how wide a male may grow a moustache. There isn't going to be a problem of men wearing skirts in uniform. The uniform regs don't allow men to wear female uniforms. There is no reason to assume that that is at all likely to change.


Homophobe is an overused and underdefined term.

If what you meant by it was someone who was uncomfortable with homosexuality or homosexuals, I'd say neither is the problem. Both are allowed to like what they like and dislike what they dislike. Neither is allowed to refuse to work with the other.

I worked with a fair number of people in the navy that I didn't like at all. I still had to work with them.

And Now, for Something Completely Different:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol5Dfs7jqFI[/youtube]

hmmm, sexual tensions perhaps? I ask, how is currently the role of women in the military, do they serve in the same battlefields with men, do they train together, etc? I tend to think that to some degree, women in the military correlates with gays in the military. I really don't know about the situation regarding women and gays, but I wonder if there are some limitations and issues, if sexual attraction is considered some sort of a problem.

Indeed.



Although I agree that the word 'homophobe' is poorly defined, its most common use is to describe someone who is anti-gay. I agree with you that intolerance is the problem, not opinion.



Yes. Let's not overlook the fact that there are millions of other reasons to dislike your fellow man that aren't subject to regular witch-hunts.



I see this in terms of what is logical, what is morally sound and what should be acceptable in the modern world. Despite your claims, I believe that you're kidding yourself if you believe your agenda and your viewpoint are anything but bigoted and rife with double-standards.

The difference between male and female BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms) in the US Army is that female uniforms tend to be cut with a tighter crotch and looser chest, for obvious physiological reasons. Any man attempting to "cross-dress" in BDUs is going to be horribly uncomfortable, but at a distance will look exactly the same as one dressed appropriately.

Incidentally, cross-dressing is not the same as homosexuality; none of the gay men I know would ever want to look like a woman (after all, they want to attract the attention of other gay men, not straights or lesbians), while the only transvestite I've known was actually straight - he just liked wearing women's clothing.

IMO, from observing many soldiers in action (and from my own service in the US Air Force in the '80s), the primary difficulty in integrating openly gay men and women into the service will be getting them to stop with the gay jokes. Other than that, the prevailing emotion so far has been, "If he can shoot straight and kill the enemy, I don't care if he likes to f*** watermelons back at the base." There's also a strong subcurrent of, "Maybe he'll cover my ass better if he thinks it's cute."