The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has claimed another American hero. Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, an F-15E Strike Eagle with nine Air Medals, including one for valor for assaulting an Iraqi ambush position while under heavy anti-aircraft fire has been discharged for liking men instead of women.
As with a number of other principles, changing this insidious policy has been put on the back burner by the Obama Administration. Fehrenbach, who was born on an Air Force base and calls the Air Force his life, has been told that he is a danger to his unit and its morale. Of course, the soldiers who he protected from an ambush by attacking that enemy position were not particularly interested in the time who he dated. The military now appears to believe that it would have been better not to have him in the airplane at all so heterosexual soldiers could die without the corrupting influence of a homosexual.
His career and those of other gay soldiers, sailors, and air personnel is simply not a priority at this time.
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Ann:
I think everyone would appreciate it if you would actually make a coherent argument as well. All view points are welcome, but you are basically throwing up a giant straw man (ancient Greek man/boy relations) and beating the hell out of it. Gays serving in the military has absolutely nothing to do with this. You took someone’s evidence of gays present in militaries throughout history (which was supporting a greater argument) and turned that into the basis of your argument. Rather than creating a discussions revolving around the topic the rest of us are focused on, you’re attacking something completely unrelated.
Evening Mespo72Cubed, Buddha, Mike S., Jill, Patty, JT, GW-Mom, Mike A, rafflaw, and all the others.
How is everyone this wonderful evening? Nice and cool in Texas tonight.
Ann,
I realize that trolls do not care about facts, but your claims about Obama and the auto industry are made up, and outright fallacious. Why don’t you provide us some documentation of the claims that you make?
With a stroke of the pen, Barack Obama has imposed higher fuel-economy standards on the American auto industry. Those standards can only be met by making the average car smaller and lighter than consumers prefer.
The inevitable result is that thousands of innocent Americans, possibly tens of thousands, will die painful and sometimes fiery deaths, while many thousands more will be seriously injured.
This prospect apparently gave Obama no pause whatsoever. He has never so much as hinted that he sees a moral dimension in the trade-off between human life and reduced carbon emissions.
On the other hand, Obama sees the brief and physically harmless discomfort of three terrorists as posing a moral crisis of almost unparalleled dimension, necessitating endless apology and hand-wringing.
The contrast in Obama’s priorities is striking, to say the least.
I would submit that this is what happens when you substitute preening for intelligent policy-making.
LOL! Isikoff was just on MSNBC (its a little watched channel on TV, check your paper) and said Obama basically told a bunch of lefties where to put it at the White House today. Additionally, when the lefties addressed Eric Holder who was present at the meeting, Obama cut into the conversation and pointedly said Holder doesn’t have anymore time to waste on their concerns.
Like I said, the MAN got elected, he don’t need you LEFTIES anymore does he!
gw lawschool mom & mike spindell:
Research pederasty because liberals seem to think the typical Spartan soldier was 1) gay and 2) a world class fighter..
Nothing is further from the truth.
Also, the ‘gays & lesbians are 12% of the population is a figure that was invented BYYYYYYYYYY……..gays & lesbians.
Most experts that don’t have a dog in the hunt estimate the gay & lesbian population at around 3%.
Woman loses tooth, gets stuck in Mets toilet
Would this be part of the don’t ask don’t tell policy?
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/9593138/Woman-loses-tooth,-gets-stuck-in-Mets-toilet?GT1=39002
Another Obama betrayal today: He is supporting Cheney and Rove in the suit Valerie Plame brought against them: http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/39740
Ann
You wrote: **We don’t need to upset and demoralize half the military to appease 3% of them do we? Of course not.
So you want to keep the 12,500 gays & lesbians (over 10 years) that broke the don’t ask don’t tell policy and lose perhaps hundreds of thousands that either 1) won’t re-up or 2) enlist in the first place.
Come on; stop trying to ruin the US Military to appease a small but vocal voting block. Oh ya, that’s right. Democrats NEED every little voting block they have accumulated, whether its the gays, lesbians, unions, teachers, welfare recipients, the unemployed, blacks, etc. or you see THEY WOULD NEVER WIN ANY ELECTIONS! **
Maybe gays and lesbians make up 3% of the military, the truth is that because of “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” we don’t really know… if their demographic is the same in the armed forces as it is in the rest of the world it is closer to 12%.
Think about this:n
Jews make up just under 2% of our population and yet they were discriminated against with more fervor than the gays who serve. African Americans make up about 9% of the population and yet they serve and die disproportionately than white do in the military.
What Mike S and I and others are talking about is discrimination.
No one wants to ruin the military and clearly gay servicemen like Lt Col Fehrehbach did not do a single thing, ever, to ruin the US Military.
If gays and lesbians can cut your hair, design your clothes, create the art on your walls, assuming that you don’t place a bowl over your head and follow the line with your pinking shears, make your clothes out of whatever and don’t have any art aside from the christian tear outs from jesus freak magazines, your life is affected by gays and lesbians everyday.
Gays and lesbians teach in schools, represent clients in court, treat illnesses in hospitals, repair cars. Why, they do just about everything and anything you might imagine yourself or one of your own children doing. Why, you may even have a gay child and not know it.
and the real truth here is that there is not a single gay or lesbian person who has affected any part of your life in any kind of negative way that springs from their identification as gay or lesbian.
why, your next door neighbors might even be gay.
Don’t Ask — Don’t Tell should not be a policy that either encourages or discourages gays and lesbians from seeking their fortunes as career military. It shouldn’t come up at all any more than it should factor into whether a Jew or African American or Latino or Asian is suitable for the military.
Former Fed,
I agree with you that this officer should not be expelled from the military because of his sexual orientation. However, he should have no different restrictions than a heterosexual officer in the military. The rights of a gay person should be the same as anyone else. Otherwise, you have a separate, but equal kind of situation. Anyone who is willing to put their lives at risk for the safety of our country should not be treated like a second class citizen.
Henry
You wrote: **GWLawSchoolMom writes that Obama “is turning out to be pretty cowardly. He is afraid to stand up to the conservative democrats.” I too am extremely disappointed in Obama, but I am not so sure about his motivation; in fact, I’m stumped as to what it is. He might be cowardly, but I can think of other possibilities. One is that he is a conservative Democrat, and he misled us during the campaign (although he gave us a hint when he voted to give the telecoms immunity). Another possibility is that his primary goal is to bring the nation together, or, to put it in a less favorable way, to get everyone to like him. This in turn could have more than one motivation: to make the nation a less combative place, or to win by a landslide in 2012. After all, he has the left sewn up: what are we going to do if we feel that he has betrayed us — vote Republican?**
Maybe Obama was a great candidate. Doesn’t mean he will be a great leader. The thing we commoners get to see is the race. What we don’t get to see is how laws are really made, the awful compromises for votes and the moral twisting and turning that politicians do. This is what keeps good people from running for office and what gives us the photo and telegenic candidate who can deliver a slogan with sincerity. Don’t all candidates mislead to one degree or another? Don’t they all want to be liked? Loved, even?
If his goal was to make America a less combative place he isn’t doing so well with that goal either.
Clearly the Republicans will and ought to use all of his missteps and failures in trying to regain some power in Congress. Maybe the biggest joke of the 2008 campaign is that Obama is a socialist. Clearly, he is not — and maybe I’d feel a bit better about him if he were.
Mike Spindell, it just never fails to amaze me how so many FAMOUS DEAD people were GAY! I mean who would have known, or did know, or even, who is there alive today to DEFEND these people against your attacks that they were gay?????
Good Lord, how many years after Obama dies of old age will we learn HE WAS GAY YOU KNOW, LOL. Lets see now, I think it takes about 80 years before there is anybody left alive to refute “he was gay you know” allegations that are so easily thrown out by that community…
Mike Spindell: Re: Spartans.
An insignificant number of the Boeotians, Spartans, and Cretans, were susceptible to pederasty.
Pederasty was seen as an effective means of population control, education, and crime reduction.
A typical pederastic relationship was between a young male aged 13 to 18 and an adult.
The Greeks strongly condemned the use of children as soldiers and constricted military pederasty to young males of at least age 16.
So Spindell, are you saying we should have a flock of young boys available for, ahem, gay soldiers?
Thanks Matthew N.
Mike Appleton,
You and I served in the miltary during the Viet Nam period. Did you know any openly gay servicemen? I did not.
Ann: you are just one of the many reasons I am for a military draft for both men and women.
FFLEO,
The infrastructure you speak of is already in place. It is against regulations for sexual relations between Marines in the same unit (or share a working relationship). Pvts. Jim and Mary will (or should be) be disciplined if a sexual relationship between them is found out if they have any working relationship at all. Having seen stuff like this happen firsthand, many officers simply look the other way. Once again, the rules/laws are selectively enforced. If Pvts. Bob and John want to do whatever they do in their off time (in garrison, obviously), that should be their own prerogative provided they do not break existing fraternization policy. The idea that homosexuals are uncontrollably hypersexual rabbits is an outright lie– it is a characteristic that many human beings share regardless of sexual orientation. The problem with changing the policy is that officers will have to actually enforce the regulations they’re supposed to. Having worked in close quarters with a great many junior officers and officer candidates, I am not very confident that many of these individuals would be willing to (or courageous enough) enforce the rules equally.
MatthewN:
interesting thoughts, which I had never thought about before. If one is honest they would have to say a squared away marine is an asset in a fire fight. Makes not one whit of difference a persons sexual orientation when the lead is flying who has got your six, the guy that thinks clearly is the one you want.
Ann’s comments reflect that she doesn’t have a clue about life in the military. She’s certainly homophobic, however. The comments regarding the Republican comeback are wishful thinking, unless one believes that South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas or Mississippi are going to provide the country’s future leadership. Judging from what they’ve got now, that’s hardly in the cards. Dream on, Ann.
Ann:
“Democrats NEED every little voting block they have accumulated, whether its the gays, lesbians, unions, teachers, welfare recipients, the unemployed, blacks, etc. or you see THEY WOULD NEVER WIN ANY ELECTIONS!”
How do you think political parties win elections? They gather coalitions of like minded or similar minded people to vote for them. You can also say that republicans will never win an election unless they get evangelists, gun owners, business owners, pro-lifers and secure border types to vote for them.
As the resident regular nearest to being a homophobe, I must admit that I think Lt. Col. Fehrenbach’s expulsion is a mistake.
Perhaps gays could be allowed to serve openly but with stringent rules against fraternization and immediate expulsion if it occurred, but only upon the establishment of irrefutable evidence during a fair military trial.
Again, and I have not tried to research the full psychological reasons why, but 2 women being together is not even close to being as objectionable as 2 homosexual men, which to me will always be repugnant. However, as a biologist, I have seen many examples of homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom and that does not even begin to include the millions of perfect flowers and those that are polygamodioecious. Some plants seem to have all of the reproductive bases covered and they are very prolific and successful.
Ergo, human homosexuality is something a civilized society must deal with by applying rules of societal order to ensure a modicum of decorum and fairness. In the military, that would mean that Bill and Phil could not openly fraternize and more than could Jack and Jill.
I prefer not to know too many details about some humanistic aspects; homosexuality is one of those. However, how can we as a society mistreat a class of citizens who pay their taxes, do not violate laws, and especially, those who are willing to give the ultimate sacrifice to protect the rest of us from harm?