Once DADT is indisputably DEAD and BURIED, I'm sure that all the homophobic brass are free to resign

[MrScorpio]

People like USMC Commandant Gen. James Conway, who wants no part of the new policy, even though he knows that he already has gay and lesbian marines serving. You can always retire, Jimmy-boy, and take your like minded pals with you.

The same goes from all the other Pentagon brass, who are so apt to defer to the Defense Department's notoriously slow-as-molasses-in-the-dead-of-winter bureaucratic nature, instead of embracing the change that is sure to come. Since I worked in the place for more than seven years, it was a real eye opener to see how hard it is for that place to change, even when that change is inevitable.

They do LOVE to make change as difficult as they can make it.

Or the homophobes with the argument that gay troops will destroy the effectiveness of the military. It hasn't occurred to these brain donors that there have always been gay and lesbians serving and that most of the damage has come, not from the fact that they are serving, but because of the witch hunt against them.

That's changing right now as we speak.

You know who I'm sure won't have any problem with the new reality?

The troops themselves, of course.

Because, when it comes right down to the nitty gritty, they know that the only thing that really counts is that if they're comrades have their backs when the shit hits the fan...

And no one really cares about who's sleeping with whom when the bullets are flying.

[Chipper Chat]

1. Maybe Homophobe John McCain will resign in protest.

At any rate, he'll blame all of this on Barbara Boxer.

[Skittles]

2. GREAT post

:thumbsup:

[old mark]

3. The US military was officially racially segregated untill President Truman

ordered it to integrate black soldiers with whites in 1948, IIRC...I am sure that many of the big brass didn't like that at all, but they kept their mouths shut and did it - although with much foot dragging - for the sake of their careers and pensions and of the great jobs they were planning in industry after they retired.

The career military officer corps takes care of itself quite well, and will eventually do what it is told out of self interest.

Besides, it might be that some of the brass has been gay all along...


mark

[Radical Activist]

6. Actually,

some top military leaders were publicly vocal about opposing desegregation. They made it very difficult and actively fought against Truman, sometimes in public. It was more than dragging their feet.
I'm sure repealing DADT will go more smoothly than Truman's clumsy effort that took six years.

[old mark]

8. The Navy took a lot longer than that...they didn't like Blacks, Jews, or Fillipinos...nt

[dsc]

12. my dad served from 53 to 55 in the 82 airborne

and it was desegregated the entire time. That would be 5 years not 6.

[Radical Activist]

13. Cool.

Desegregation happened gradually. Some unites and branches integrated faster than others.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/desegregation/large/index.php?action=chronology

March 28, 1949: The three service secretaries testify before the Fahy Committee. Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington and Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan both testify that they are opposed to segregation and are pursuing policies to integrate their services. Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall argues in favor of maintaining segregation, saying that the Army "was not an instrument for social evolution."

[dsc]

16. the Airborne is the army

so the army had integrated by 53, and this was a southern base (NC).

[Radical Activist]

17. OK...

I'm not sure if you're just sharing anecdotes, or if you think that contradicts what I wrote. It doesn't. The military didn't integrate all at once. Obama is repealing DADT much faster and more smoothly than Truman integrated the military.

Here's the start of the timeline in 1945.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/desegregation/large/index.php?action=chronology

September 1945: Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson appoints a board of three general officers to investigate the Army's policy with respect to African-Americans and to prepare a new policy that would provide for the efficient use of African-Americans in the Army. This board is called the Gillem Board, after its chairman, General Alvan C. Gillem, Jr.


And here's the end of it eight years later...

October 1953: The Army announces that 95% of African-American soldiers are serving in integrated units..

[dsc]

19. that is highly misleading to call it 8 years

Truman issued the order in 48 and you claimed it took 6 years. Your own figures shows 95% integration by 5 years. My point was that by the time my dad served, before the 6 year timetable you said it took, it had already been done, which your figures show to be true.

[Radical Activist]

20. You're quibbling over details that are irrelevant to the point.

The process of integration started before Truman issued the executive order. Whether it took 5 or 6 years, it's clear that Obama is acting faster than Truman, and he's doing it without the high profile public defiance by top military leaders that Truman had to deal with. It appears that Obama may be acting in a way to avoid that kind of public feud with military leaders that could make repealing DADT much more difficult.

[Solly Mack]

4. k/r

[Radical Activist]

5. Good idea. They can retire and go to hell.

[pinboy3niner]

7. I'd trade Gen. Conway in for a gay Marine like Randy Taylor any day

Some of this was posted in another thread, but Randy's story is worth telling again.

I met Randy at a Vet Center in the '80s. He did three tours in Vietnam, most of it as a Marine Corps Infantry squad leader. His sexual orientation and PTSD caused a big public flap--and hurt him deeply--when he joined the SFPD after the war. The harrassment and abuse by his "brothers in blue" was so overwhelming that he finally quit, after having fought--and won--a long and hard battle for the right to serve as a police officer.

Years later, when he was living in D.C. and suffering from AIDS, I used to take him to and from the hospital for his frequent appointments and in-patient stays. At his apartment, he used to apologize for serving me his "gay" raspberry-cream coffee, lol. His constant companions were his two dogs.

Randy suffered more than his share of discrimination and abuse. He was jumped and beaten in his neighborhood and even in his apartment several times when he was sick and weak. Randy always tried to do his best, in a society that wouldn't allow him to be who he was.

When we lost him in '93, the Washington Post ran a nice obituary that highlighted the huge turnout of Randy's veteran comrades:

The U.S. hero 'epitomized': Gay Vietnam vet eulogized by military colleagues

Randy Taylor, an acknowledged hero of the Vietnam War who also was a homosexual, was buried Mar 31, 1993 with full military honors. Taylor, who was eulogized by his military colleagues, died of AIDS.

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/8552082.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS&date=Apr+1%2C+1993&author=Wheeler%2C+Linda&pub=The+Washington+Post&edition=&startpage=C1&desc=The+U.S.+hero+%27epitomized%27%3A++Gay+Vietnam+vet+eulogized+by+military+colleagues

If Gen. Conway would not have in his ranks a dedicated, decorated combat Infantry Marine like Randy, who spilled his blood to save the lives of his fellow Marines, then the USMC deserves better, more enlightened leadership. To paraphrase a colloquial Vietnamese expression, Conway isn't worth one of Randy's little fingernails.

The troops who've fought this country's wars have already weighed in on the issue:





In the opinion of this combat Infantry Vietnam vet, repeal of DADT is long overdue.

[Kahuna]

9. Excellent post, Mr. Scorpio..

:yourock:

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. I think this is almost certainly nonsense.

A large number of Americans support DADT (either a large minority or a small majority; I think the former).

Supporting DADT correlates very strongly with being conservative
Being a soldier correlates moderately strongly with being conservative.

So I think it's almost certainly grossly overoptimistic to assume that there won't be a large number of soldiers who object to DADT being repealed.

"The little people are on our side and our enemies are some faceless, overprivileded Them" is a very comforting myth, but it's not one with any connection to reality at all.

[Swamp Rat]

11. They can bite my shiny metal ass!

:D

[political_Dem]

14. K & R. Very nice, Mr. Scorpio.

[thereismore]

15. Or come out! nt

[EFerrari]

18. Ending DADT is going to be good for unit cohesion.

And I don't doubt the Pentagon is sitting on studies that show just that.

[Erose999]

21. Military brass are over-rated. Its not like theres a freakin' shortage on them. Just get rid of the

homophobes and promote up the ones who aren't homophobes. Its not like the brass at that level make tactical battlefield decisions anyway.

End DADT.

End the occupations of Iraq and AFGN.

Shrink the defense budget and let our allies like Germany and Japan provide their own damn defense.

End the pentagon/intelligentsia's agenda of domestic surveillance and secrecy.

We need to make the military work for our defense again instead of the defense of the war profiteers, crooked politicians, and despotic regimes.