The Glade 4.0

Whatever. This is pretty much your standard response, and has zero point as far as the real issue plays out. The latest poll of military men indicates that 10% of men will not re-join if homosexuals are allowed to openly serve, and another 14% will consider not continuing to serve. Suppose of that 24%, 12% do not "re-up". What difference does it make if they are scared of catching teh gay, or morally outraged? They're still gone. Are there that many recruits out there to fill the gap? Re-institute the draft, anyone?

Only if you live in a fantasyland that has no connection to how the real world works.

I'm not arguing about whether being gay or having an alternative life-style is morally right or wrong.

All I'm trying to say is that our troops have more important issues to deal with than whether they should be allowed to openly state their sexuality or not, and openly stating it may cause more harm than it is worth.

I still think the unit cohesion has some validity to it, and I still think that if you are dividing your unit for whatever reason, you should be kicked out.

Many people make enormous sacrifices to serve our country. If people want to serve our country, I don't see why they can't just make that small sacrifice and not openly discuss their sexual orientation during their enlistment and chalk it up to all the other sacrifices our men and women make in order to serve in the military.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Doesn't seem much different from your standard response to facts and logic. I believe you called my post ... what was it ... pointless driven because it demonstrates the flaws in Turek's reasoning and your own?Link this poll to me. I want to see it. Until then, you're just pissing in the wind, Beryllin.Bare Assertion fallacy and non-sequitur.

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This would be fine if we started kicking Heterosexuals who talked about the hot chick at the bar they scored last night.

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Khross: huh? How does that have any relevancy to this whatsoever?
Every movie I've seen and everyone I've talked to who has been in the military have pointed out that talking about scoring with hot chicks is actually a bonding thing among units.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

So what's next then LK? Are we going to start kicking out the Wiccans because the Christians are uncomfortable with them? Or maybe we'll kick out the Blacks because they make all the White folk uncomfortable.

The fact is that just like EVERY OTHER JOB IN THE WORLD, you're going to have to deal with some folks that you don't particularly like or don't approve of their personal choices. It's called being a professional and DOING YOUR JOB.

See, that response makes more sense. Thanks Aizle, thats a valid point.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I did not find the poll itself, but I did find an article about the poll, from 2008....


http://americansfortruth.com/news/poll- ... itary.html

According to the article, if 10% refused to "re-up", it would cost us roughly 228,600 men, more than the entire Marine corp.

Except, if one person isn't allowed to talk about his sexual identity, why are they? That's the only problem here. If Ray Bob Blonde **** gets to be out and proud with the group about the little barely legal farm girl he schtupped in the ladies' room, then Mr. Metrosexual gets to talk about her brother in the hay loft.

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Beryllin:

There's only 1.47 million active personnel in the U.S. military.

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But the military isn't like every other job in the world. Your life does not usually depend on the decisions of the office worker in the cubicle across the room. In the military, it often does, and unit cohesion is often what makes a difference between life and death, mission success or mission failure.

Aizle:

That isn't the argument being made. There's nothing about being in the military that excepts personnel from having to deal with people they don't get along with - that's what anti-discrimination laws and boot camp are for.

Fraternization with fellow soldiers, especially between ranks is why units are seperated by sexes. Tell me, if gay relationships, be them only sexual in nature or more, are equal to that of heterosexual relationships, why iss seperation to prevent fraternization and unreasonable basis?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

This is a variant on the No True Scotsman fallacy. The U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law, which incidentally applies to the UCMJ. So, either we start booting Heterosexuals for being open about their sexuality, or you shut up. Take your pick.

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So? Reserves and such do not count? The article does not say that 10% of active military personnel....

Seriously. What is the big deal with asking someone not to talk about their sexual orientation?
So soldiers for hundreds of years have bonded over stories of scoring chicks. So some guy can't tell his stories of scoring other dudes. Big deal! Its the military. Suck it up and deal with it. Everyone makes sacrifices. Also, believe it or not, not every soldier feels the need to discuss who they ****** last night.

If its more important to talk about your sex life in public than it is to protect our country than you don't need to be in the military to begin with.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

The other way to look at this is that 90% wouldn't be affected by this change. Further, it would be VERY interesting to find out how many gay men and women would get back into or enlist in the military once it was lifted.

Since when did serving in the military become a right? It has been pointed out a news program I watched recently that of the people booted from the military recently, those booted under DADT accounted for 0.5% of the dismissals. So 99.5% of the dismissals were for other reasons. Should we stop dismissing all those others, too, because the Constitution guarantees equal protection?

Really? And I'm gonna apologize for this in advance, because it's harsh, but I want you to get the point. Remember your rant a while back about your miscarriage, and how it was killing you to put on a facade and pretend how it wasn't killing you? Now do that ALL the time, for years on end while you're in the service. Same thing.

The death of a child and who I **** are two totally different things, Aizle you prick.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

The actual experience of other countries that allow homosexuals to serve openly contradicts both of these points. Israel, Britain, and Canada, for example, all allow open service (that's what he said! *grin*), and none of them have experienced unit cohesion or recruitment problems as a result. And in both Britain and Canada (I don't about Israel), prior to the ban being lifted, polls of people in the military were similar if not worse than the ones here in the US now.

And of course, there's also the point that it's just flat wrong to discriminate, even if letting gays serve might make homophobes uncomfortable.



Perhaps, but there's a cost to that prevention - the loss of qualified gay men and women who would otherwise serve.

You're still missing the point - this doesn't have anything to do with catering or not catering to anyone's sensibilities. It's about structuring the military so as to keep sexual fraternization and harassment to a minimum.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Technically speaking, I don't have a dog in this fight. If the military and the government want to repeal DADT and allow homosexuals to openly serve, it's no skin off my nose. My argument is simply that it is a bad idea, and I believe there will be negative consequences, as I have pointed out. If those consequences do come about, I don't really want to hear any boohoo-ing from the advocates. You'll get no sympathy from this corner, sowing and reaping can be a real pain, sometimes.

Bery, this is a ranger messageboard. There's always going to be tons of sowing around here.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Go easier on him. Speaking as a bisexual who has had a miscarriage, your orientation is an integral part of who you are. Hiding and dealing with that conflict builds up over time and is far more agonizing and stressful that putting on a strong face when dealing with grief.

See, heterosexuals don't realize this, because nobody forces them not to discuss their orientation. Which brings up another point you made:



Apply the same standards to heterosexuals and see how well it works. What if nobody could give any indication of their sexual orientation in the military without getting kicked out? No talking about your family/wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/kids/dates/fights... our entire lives centre around our orientation. Straight people just don't notice this.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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