Can some one please tell me why it's even a rule that army personel must be straight at all?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100313/ap_ ... discharged

On paper there is no such rule, on paper you can be gay, you just can't allow it to become known. The reason behind this, and I'm not saying I agree with this reason, is to prevent it from becoming a distraction. Which, was the same argument that had been used against letting women into the military (and until recently was still in effect for submarines), and the same argument that had been used against desegregation before that.

If there is one thing militaries never like, it's change

During WW2 there was a famous story involving the British Army. During a field gun training exercise, a civilian spectator noticed that each gun had a crew of six, but the sixth person did not actually do anything and was to stand a distance off to the side of the gun at attention. Stumped, the civilian asked the field commander why they always had a sixth person for each gun standing by them self off in the distance. The commander's response was that the sixth person was number six, who according to the manual, had to stand at attention off to the side. The commander did not know why the manual said this, but "order's were orders" and "It had always been done this way." The civilian then decided to figure out just why this was, and later started going over the older editions of the manual to see if the sixth person ever served a real purpose.

The sixth person was to stand a distance off to the side; originally so that they could hold the horses.



The distraction argument isn't the full story though. A lot of this has to do with stereotypes. Gays, particularly males who are gay, are stereotyped as being nymphomaniacs [all those stories about highway rest areas for example]. Because of these stereotypes, some of the policymakers believe that allowing gays to serve openly would result in them going on sexual binges with each other [between the close-quarters throughout the military, the sex-ratios- this is taken as a really big concern].

Sex in combat is explicitly forbidden (whether it is heterosexual or homosexual in nature) because it can jeopardize discipline [i.e. instances of rape], and can bypass regulations on fraternization. Militaries take great pains to dehumanize the relationships between its members. Suppose a battleship is hit and is taking on water rapidly. The reaction militaries want to have to those types of scenarios, is to shut the water tight compartments. Knowing, full well, that such a order will be the death sentence to anyone inside the areas sealed off. There has been enough research on the subject that militaries know, the SO who fraternizes with the subordinates isn't going to give the order to seal off those compartments as fast, and some SO's might be tempted to try to delay the order intentionally in hopes of saving their friends. If the SO's aren't allowed to fraternize with their subordinates, it allows the chain of command to work better as a machine.

Knowing all this, the assumption is that these problems would be exasperated if soldiers had crushes on each other. If an SO might delay an order in hopes of saving friends who are subordinates, what will happen if some SO's have crushes on their subordinates (or worse: have real LTR's with them)?

Personally I take issue with some of these assumptions & conclusions. The military has been able to successfully integrate women into the forces. The sex ratio still heavily favors men, and any given individual (male or female) is more likely to be heterosexual than not. So if these ill-scenarios were to happen, my money would be on them happening between straight women & men. If these problems were so potent, so widespread, and so uncontrollable, allowing women into the military would have long since become a fatal problem. Not only has this not been such a problem, but the military is expanding the use of women knowing full well it is not such a big deal. In fact just this year the USN has decided to allow a woman to serve onboard a submarine, a first in history if I am not mistaken.

I can't vouch for the truth of this, but apparently the ancient Greek army used to encourage same-sex partners to join the army.

It led to an increased sense of camaraderie because it gave soldiers more of a personal interest.


And now, on a slightly darker note... This doesn't really hold true. The primary prize that many victorious armies claim - and I daresay, given the truths which have been emerging from Iraq, that there would be little reason to doubt that the armies of Britain or America are any different - is to wreak sexual havoc with the population.

You're right, the Greeks did it. Their Roman contemporaries didn't. Not that the Romans had any prudish problems with a little man-on-man action – it just wasn't tolerated in the Roman military because the Romans were extremely class conscious and it was believed that a soldier having any sort of sexual influence over his military superior would result in a breakdown of command. Even among the common, rank-and-file Roman soldiers, there were social lines that weren't crossed (as in patrician versus plebeian during the era of the Republic).

But I'm digressing on a favorite subject. Back to the topic. What I find particularly disturbing is that the police officers who outed Newsome claim that they "spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome's home." Uh-huh. Shuuuure. Everybody leaves their marriage license lying on the kitchen table, right? And, one should be able to read such a document easily through a window while standing outside the house, right? Sounds like BS, and more likely what the police did was break into Newsome's home without a search warrant.

-- Nephele

Who cares if someone is gay or straight in the military? I have spoken to many soldiers and every one of them has said they don't care. They see it as an ally watching their back, a person regardless of petty differences.

[quote="Nephele
But I'm digressing on a favorite subject. Back to the topic. What I find particularly disturbing is that the police officers who outed Newsome claim that they "spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome's home." Uh-huh. Shuuuure. Everybody leaves their marriage license lying on the kitchen table, right? And, one should be able to read such a document easily through a window while standing outside the house, right? Sounds like BS, and more likely what the police did was break into Newsome's home without a search warrant.

-- Nephele[/quote]
I totally agree, my BS detector is going off loud and clear here. You have to stop and wonder, what motivates a person to go to such lengths to get someone fired? And really, why should they be fired? As far as I'm aware , her wife isn't in the military so why would this be any diffrent than,say, a man and a woman being married where only one of them is in the army?

I think that someone over there is uncomfortable with the idea of some one "daring" to be of a diffent sexual preference.

That sounds like a pretty fair interpretation to me, Puck! However, it would be interesting to establish whether there's a two-tier system in operation here - whether in this case she was considered an easier mark because she's a woman or whether there's a problem of attitude in general to same-sex couples where one of the partners is in the armed forces...

Exactly. It isn't a "distraction". It does no harm. There's either a hidden reason for this woman's firing or a power trip for anti-homosexual leaders.

People complain it hurts the unity of squads and so forth. But if we're going to be intolerable to one group because a few people are uncomfortable, those few are the ones that should change.

It may be stretching it, but there's racists in America still. Should we not allow non-whites to serve because a few racist whites will be uncomfortable serving with other races? The point being that the difference is minor and I cannot see it affecting the cohesion of the unit. These soldiers are under way more stress from far more important things than sexual orientation for it to even matter. It's not something that should be met with punishment.

Funnily enough, this is likely apocryphal. Most artillery was still horse-drawn during WWII. It's really only in the very very late war that the allies became primarily motorized, while the axis powers were even MORE dependant on horses. Willy's Jeep and the Universal Carrier did more for the war effort than most people know.

I would venture the idea that sgath was refering to "blue on blue" rape rather than the traditional "rape and pillage" variety.

Too true, the military is far more likely to rape one of their own than a civillian. That is what they should be focusing on addressing rather than one's sexuality!

My opinion on this may be unpopular.

Now, I have no issue with gays in the military. I just really don't care who has sex with who. However, it is very hard to be married in the military and it not be found out or known. How it was found out by police before her unit I couldn't say. However it is the Air Force and they don't do things the same as the Army. But, she was very, very stupid in getting married to another female while still in service. She should've known what would happen. It sounds messed up but it is the way things work unfortunately.

Found it interesting...this posted on the CNN web site just today:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/25/ ... tml?hpt=T1