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The battle on the home front
By Rev. Irene Monroe
It is not
surprising that Gen. Peter Pace — chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and senior ranking officer in the U.S.
military — gave his personal opinion about gay service
personnel, stating that homosexuality is “immoral.” But
it is surprising that in the midst of a war that needs
every able-bodied fighter, the enlisting of our American
patriots continues to include a debate about sexual
orientation.
Military readiness
is not a heterosexual calling. And even Charles Moskos,
the chief architect of the failed “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell” policy, has said that it should be temporarily
suspended, especially if the draft is reinstated.
Under current
policy, the Pentagon polices the sexual behavior of its
service members because grounds for their discharge
include: “if they attempt to engage in a ‘homosexual
act,’ state they are gay openly (unless they can prove
they have no propensity or intention to engage in a
‘homosexual act’) or attempt to marry a person of the
same sex.”
The military’s
belief that service members who are gay or lesbian
endanger “unit cohesion” only maintains a policy of
segregation and fosters a climate of intolerance.
Also, the beliefs
that men of mixed sexual orientations showering together
and heterosexual women sitting on the same toilet seats
as lesbians corrupt the military’s image are eerily
reminiscent of the same arguments used when the military
was forced to racially integrate.
But Pace isn’t the
only one who feels gays should not serve in the
military. In a 2003 interview with online news site
TeenInk.com, former Secretary of State Colin Powell
shared his reason for defending the military’s ban on
gay service members: “I think it’s a different matter
with respect to the military, because you’re essentially
told who you’re going to live with, who you’re going to
sleep next to.”
The Rev. Peter J.
Gomes, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard
University, wrote in his essay, “Black Christians and
Homosexuality: The Pathology of a Permitted Prejudice,”
that Powell’s concern that gay Americans in the military
would “destroy unit cohesion,” and thus compromise
military capability, is a fallacious argument that he
should know is reminiscent of the military’s long
history of racist arguments that he, too, had once
endured.
Unit cohesion and
military capability, Gomes stated, “remains an
appropriate concern of a military man, but Gen. Powell
in this dispute was more than a mere military man. He
was a military man of color, and thus could give cover
to any painful analogy between the admission of gays
into a heterosexual military and the admission of blacks
into a white military.”
Homophobia, like
racism and sexism, in our armed forces is dangerous
because it thwarts the necessary emotional bonding
needed among soldiers in battle, and it underutilized
the needed human resources to make a strong military.
On another front,
the privacy rationale states that all service members
have the right to maintain at least partial control over
the exposure of their bodies and intimate bodily
functions. In other words, heterosexual men deserve the
right to control who sees their naked bodies. According
to the privacy rationale argument, the “homosexual gaze”
in same-sex nudity does more than disrupt unit cohesion.
Its supposedly predatory nature expresses sexual
yearning and desire for unwilling subjects that not only
violates the civil rights of heterosexuals, but also
causes untoward psychological and emotional trauma.
While it is
believed that the “homosexual gaze” would be the root
cause for the disruption of unit cohesion and military
capability, it is actually the macho male heterosexual
culture embedded in this milieu. It is this culture that
both sexually harasses and rapes female and gay service
members.
A study entitled, “
A Modest Proposal: Privacy as a Flawed Rationale for the
Exclusion of Gays and Lesbians from the U.S. Military,”
states that banning gay and lesbian service members
would not preserve the privacy of its heterosexual
service members, but would instead undermine
heterosexual privacy because of its systematic invasion
to maintain it. And in order to maintain heterosexual
privacy, military inspectors would not only inquire
about the sexual behaviors of its service members, but
also look into the sexual behaviors of the spouses,
partners, friends and relatives of its service members.
The study found
that heterosexuals already shower with known gay service
members, so lifting the ban would not significantly
increase the number of gay personnel, and few
heterosexuals are extremely uncomfortable with gay
service members.
However, gays in
the military were not always forcefully closeted with a
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Like heterosexual
service members, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
service members have been proudly and openly putting
their lives on the line for their countries since
antiquity.
The Greeks, for
one, favored gay and bisexual young men in their
military. Since gay and bisexual men were considered a
family unit, the Greeks knew that paired male lovers
assigned to the same battalions were a military asset.
They would fights courageously, side by side, and would
die heroically together in battle.
Alexander the Great
(356-323 BCE), king of Macedonia and noted as one of the
greatest military conquerors, was openly bisexual. When
his lover Hephaestion died in battle, Alexander not only
mourned openly for his lover, he staged an extravagant
funeral that took six months to prepare.
Military drag was a
common practice in war during the first century.
Heterosexual and queer men were known to cross-dress as
women in order to catch their opponents off-guard.
First-century historian Josephus wrote in his “History
of the Jewish War”: “While their faces looked like the
faces of women, they killed with manly right hands.”
Our most well known
queers in the military, however, are Jonathan and David
in the Old Testament. In Samuel 18:1-3, Jonathan makes a
covenant with David and strips off his clothes in front
of Jonathan to give him his armor. In Samuel 20:41,
Jonathan and David kiss each other. When Jonathan dies
in battle, David conveys his love for Jonathan when he
says, in 2 Samuel 1:26: “I grieve for you, Jonathan my
brother! Most dear have you been to me; your love more
wonderful to me surpassing the love of women.”
Our gay and lesbian
service members are prepared to defend this country with
their lives. And an absence of openly gay and lesbian
service members shows how America will not be able to
present itself as a united front on the battlefield
because the real war in America is with itself.
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posted 25 March 2007 * *
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updated 3 November 2007 |
