Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
After a great afternoon playing with my grandsons, it is time to get back to “work”. One of the news items that flew under the radar this week was the report that the Pentagon has established a start date for its training to prepare troops for the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that made it through the recent Lame Duck Congress. I was pleasantly surprised that Defense Secretary Gates has moved quickly on the repeal, but I am confused as to why the troops have to be trained to treat everyone equally?
“The Pentagon has begun preparing the US military for the presence of openly gay troops in its ranks and said a training programme would begin in February. Gay troops could begin serving openly by the summer, once training has been completed and the White House agrees the policy will not hinder fighting.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12313320 I can understand that the troops need to be instructed on which benefits do or do not get covered now that openly gay military members will be accepted officially. However, as I asked in the title above, how hard can it be for military personnel to treat their gay comrades as equals? Don’t the various services pride themselves on their discipline? If so, why can’t the military just order its people that everyone is now considered the same and any harassment or discrimination will be grounds for a court-martial?
It did disturb me to also discover that the same sex spouses of military personnel will not be covered under the medical benefits and housing allowances because the Federal government does not recognize same-sex couples under the Defense of Marriage Act.
“Clearly the military has no interest in doing anything that would contradict DOMA. And yet federal employees have same-sex benefits, many of them extended by President Obama last year. The military could go further. ” http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/01/29/pentagon-lays-out-schedule-for-ultimate-repeal-of-dont-ask-dont-tell/ Maybe someone should ask Gates why members of the military are not treated the same as Federal employees when it comes to same-sex benefits?
There is another ongoing problem with the military’s handling of gay personnell that the recent repeal of DADT did not deal with. It seems that the Department of Defense has an internal policy that anyone who was separated due to homosexuality, has received only one half of the normal separation payment from the Pentagon. How can homosexual members be treated any differently from their heterosexual counterparts when it comes to separation pay? That is a question that the ACLU is working on and has filed a class action lawsuit to challenge it. You can use this link to get more information on the ACLU class action suit: http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights/collins-v-united-states-class-action-military-separation-pay
It looks like the DADT repeal process may be complete and certified this year, but the issues relating to same-sex couples’ benefits and separation pay need to be resolved in order for gay members of the military to really be “equal”. Secretary Gates, the ball is in your court!
Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
Tony:
Forbidding homosexuals to openly speak about homosexuality will be replaced with forbidding Christians to say they consider homosexuality immoral.
Tootie: “Because filthy leftists will not allow people to be opposed to it and say so?”
Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I believe the law about to repealed gags only homosexuals from telling and the armed services from asking. Under the provisions of the recently passed law these gag clauses are set to be lifted this year.
Where on earth did you get the idea that “filthy leftists” had a veto on the first amendment? The religious right has not been slow to prove you wong by voicing strong opposition to this change of law.
Because filthy leftists will not allow people to be opposed to it and say so?
rafflaw
I never checked it out and maybe it was one of those unspoken agreements – or he coud have been pulling my leg. I was pretty young at the time. All I know, is that is clearly what he said.
Thanks Tony S..
Uganda is one of the countries where gay service members would be under some restrictions, but it wouldn’t be anything dissimilar to what all NATO personnel are subject to in Saudi Arabia. Spouses would, I suspect, remain at home anyway on such deployments.
Buckeye,
I have never heard of the alleged agreement not to station Jews in Libya or other Middle Eastern countries.
Tony S.
“Gay British service personnel still face unusual rigors, particularly when working in close liaison with American NATO forces and in countries where homosexual acts are still illegal, but it’s in the nature of joining the forces that you have to be prepared to make sacrifices for the job.”
So how do the troops prepare if they are to be dispatched to, say, Uganda?
Back in the 60’s I worked as a civilian at a military base and a middle-aged sargeant told me he’d never be sent to Libya because the US had an agreement with them to never station Jews there. I was astonished, but he wasn’t.
Lotta,
great links!
AY, the joke worked!! 🙂
The reason, I surmise, is simply that the military is a hierarchical, tyrannical, authoritarian atrocity which is as though designed and constructed only to eradicate itself and everything else, while being perfectly oblivious to this colossal tragedy of cyclical, destructive ignorance.
The purpose, as best I can discern, of military training is solely to terrifyingly shatter innocent people into such intense self-hatred as to eradicate any viable capacity to recognize such hatred, even when it is delusionally projected onto those fantasized as though being enemies.
In my bioengineering work, it appears to me that I may have uncovered the most lethal of all infective viruses; not finding it previously named, and having last studied Latin over fifty years ago, I may stumble in naming this virus, but stumbling happens, and, if the name includes my stumbling, all the better.
Thus I name the virus uncovered by my ongoing bioengineering research:
“delusio ingensus extensia humanus”
Having found this virus decades ago, my work since then has been the genetic engineering of the proper anti-virus. The first prototype is now ready for field testing.
As I find that I am apparently the first person to discover delusio ingensus extenisa humanus, I now name its anti-virus, a work of decades of my intensely diligent bioengineering research:
“veritas æternus extentia universus”
Veritas æternus extentia universus has been meticulously genetically engineered to feed forever exclusively, relentlessly and voraciously on delusio ingensus extenisa humanus. It goes about as though guided by a perfectly chaotic, beyond-random form of trans-infinite Markov chain, throughout all the dimensions and more of both existence and non-existence.
One specific genetically-engineered property of veritas æternus extentia universus is quite simply that it is absolutely and flawlessly immortal. Furthermore, its only possible substrate is the noösphere region of the biosphere.
The social structure I find, more than any other, to have as its basis founding first principle, the adversarial system, is the military establishment.
I observe the established, nearly totally religious, Anglo-American Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence to be very nearly insignificant by contrast with the world-wide military establishment.
Except in the form of real delusions, no real enemies exist, have existed, or will ever exist. It is because my life was and is given to me without the capability of my ever actually becoming delusional that I an perfectly without enemies and perfectly without the possibility of having one or more enemies.
It saddens me to weeping, yet not at all dismays me, to find myself as though treated with boundlessly hateful enmity for my having no actual enemies nor possibility of actual enemies.
There is a book I read, one might call it the book of life, and in that book is the unbreakable promise that anyone who accepts a gift of life similar to the gift of life given to me, whether the most special of all possible people or the most ordinary of all possible people, or anywhere else in the realm of the most ordinary to the most extraordinary, if pioneering the pragmatically practicable way of living such a life, will surely encounter some form of every plague ever to exist.
Exemplar? Joan of Arc?
Exemplar? Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Exemplar? Viola Luizzo?
Exemplar? James Chaney?
Exemplar? Michael Schwerner?
Exemplar? Andrew Goodman?
Exemplar? Fred Hampton?
Exemplar? Malcolm X?
Future exemplar? Jared Loughner?
Just wondering…
The difficulties of humans and humanity are not because humans are imperfect nor because existence is imperfect.
The difficulties humans seemingly encounter are of the present state of the process of the evolution of existence as ongoing creativity. That which has neither been created nor has evolved simply does not yet actually exist. In the ordinary sense, today did not actually exist a week ago.
The military needs to train the troops on don’t ask, don’t tell repeal in order to keep the troops from asking or telling the truth of their abuse within the military establishment.
Authoritarianism needs to be such or loose its authoritarian power.
(“loose” is not a typographical error, though I assuredly do make many typographical errors)
It is the government so we can spend 10.1 million of your dollars on publication and another 2.5 billion to implement the same. What is common sense in some is sensitivity training for others….How about one of them fairy’s to teach it….they know sensitivity….
The above was meant only as humor…
Tony, thanks for a shout-out for my hometown paper. Tis was one of the items in the article that I found very disturbing:
“And the disparity could soon widen.
Data from the Air Force indicate that 87 percent of those seeking to become chaplains are enrolled at evangelical divinity schools.”
The evangelical christians have harmed the military in that they have worked to turn it into god’s army. This is not winning us friends in the countries wherein we are fighting, and skewing the way many troops look at their mission. There was a slew of links in another recent thread over this matter so I’m not going to get into that, I don’t want to hijack the thread in that direction.
The point as Tony so rightly states is that the evangelical influence on the military must include their notions of ‘sin’ and resistance to the full implementation of rights for gay soldiers. But evangelicals aren’t the only ones. IMO any sermonizing or counseling that disparages gays or their rights, or works to suppress their right and equal support and service’s, from any chaplain or priest, should meet swift and harsh correction including dismissal from the force.
Here’s a link to a former Navy chaplain’s website. I wouldn’t let this guy near any captive audience, let alone the military:
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=194510
And a link pointing out the wider nature of the problem, check out the second to last para.:
http://online.worldmag.com/2010/10/29/retired-chaplains-warn-against-dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal/
Tony S., that is an interesting statistic.
Blouise, you could be right about the “excess” funds!
They probably have money left over in some “Consultant/Contractor” budget that needs to be spent and I’m sure there’s a few consulting firms that have a DADT deprogramming program ready to go ….
One of the reasons for the obstacles on the way to open service in the United States may be this alarming statistic. According to an article in the St. Louis Dispatch earlier this month, while only 3% of those in service describe themselves as evangelical Christians, some 33% of their chaplains do.
Now I can tell you that article had me spitting out my breakfast cereal that day!
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/article_19c66ee6-82b8-59f7-b3d5-fd3cc05bc538.html
Tony S.,
Well said! The American military is still preventing the dependents of military members from equal use of and payment for housing and medical benefits. We have a ways to go. We should point to our NATO ally, Great Britain, as an example of how easy it should be.
The British armed forces implemented their own open service rules a decade ago. I don’t think there was any fuss, the orders were received and executed. That’s supposed to be how armed services work, isn’t it?
Another thing: if you’re in a civil partnership with a same-sex partner in the UK you have a right to what used to be called married quarters, which have been renamed to “Service Family Accommodation.” I’m going to hazard a guess that this is a fight that is yet to be fought in the United States.
Gay British service personnel still face unusual rigors, particularly when working in close liaison with American NATO forces and in countries where homosexual acts are still illegal, but it’s in the nature of joining the forces that you have to be prepared to make sacrifices for the job. At least the forces themselves aren’t obstacles to their own valued volunteer personnel.
eniobob, well said. I am glad I wasn’t the only one!
Elaine,
I did not see the Choi article. It is sickening to think they are sending him a bill for being terminated. It was their decision to terminate him in the first place. Maybe the ACLU class action suit will deal with this issue from the constitutional aspect. I sure hope so. That is a travesty!
Rafflaw,
Did you see this story the other day?
From Huffington Post
Dan Choi Told To Repay Military $2,500 After Being Discharged Under DADT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/27/dan-choi-repay-army-bonus-dadt-discharge_n_815102.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Under don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT), not only does an openly gay service member get kicked out of the military, but he or she may have to repay the Defense Department for any unfinished service.
Since coming out in 2009, Lt. Dan Choi has become an outspoken advocate for the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell, which passed Congress late last year but remains in effect until a lengthy certification process is completed.
On Dec. 20, 2010, the Defense Department sent Choi a letter — and a bill — saying he owed the U.S. government $2,500 for the “unearned portion of your enlistment or reenlistment bonus.” According to the letter, if Choi did not pay his debt within 30 days, the Department would possibly refer his account to a private collection agency, follow up with the Justice Department for legal action and report the delinquency to credit bureaus.
raff:
“but I am confused as to why the troops have to be trained to treat everyone equally?”
That makes (2) of us it is called “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”for a reason.Are so I would think.