I would think that cordoning off certain units within a branch of the Service (or all Branches) would cause real problems with transfers... if you belong to a 'test' unit, then the Military would be inhibited from transferring you out to another unit when the need arises. Hamstring the military's deployment flexibility like that for long, and you start to affect the readiness of that Service.

IF you are going to experiment, I think it would be necessary to do it by BRANCH of Service, not various units within a Branch.

The question, of course, is which Branch of the US Military to you potentially put at risk? How do you make that choice in such a way as to be fair, and to cause the least impact if you are wrong? IF you are uncomfortable with that choice, why would you be comfortable with applying it to the US Military as a whole?

Oh, how I love it when someone begins a pontification with the entry remarks, "I don't know **** from Shinola (?what is Shinola?) about the topic, but I shall proceed to utter event-changing comments on the topic, at least as soon as I can remember what it is."
Have you noticed that, of 250,000 requests for comments sent out, only 29% were returned? Further, have you stumbled across the reports that those who are now serving in active combat engagements are overwhelmingly opposed to repeal of DADT?
Well, obviously, we must reeducate those unenlightened fools, who are concerned only with their survival, and not with the greater societal good.
Excuse me, but speaking (unenvited) for all the throglodytes who have actual experience in the military, but I'd rather those poor patriots would go back into their closets.

I too see merit on both sides, but the deciding factor for me is that the demand is coming from a group that has traditionally hated the military. Thus I refuse to believe they have the best interests of the military in mind. It's like enlisting Dr. Kevorkian as your chemotherapist.

BTW Bart,
Shinola was the brand name of a line of shoe/boot polish back in the old "brown shoe" army days. The expression is calling someone dumb eough to try to get a shine out of sh*t.

The difference - and it is a major difference - between segregation in the old military, and allowing gays in the military; is the difference between appearance and behavior. I am black, a fact that can be ascertained over the proverbial country mile. Just as it can be ascertained whether I am short or tall, fat or lean. It's simply a question of how I look. It says noting at all about my probable behavior. The fact that someone is gay, says they are sexual attracted to many of their fellow military personnel. This might not present a problem to some pencil pusher in the Pentagon (where they seem to have concentrated this "survey") because they go home at the end of the day. However at the "sharp end of the spear" it's often 24/7, and 365. Many of the members of the military, come from the more conservative regions of the country. I doubt whether New York's West Greenwich Village or San Francisco's Castro Street are sending significant numbers to the military. And although anyone in who has ever been in the military, is familiar with the "three girls in every port" type; there was never the idea that there might be a chance that one of "those types" wanted the guy in the next bunk to be one of those "girls". And if one of those types was after women service members, the various services have taken steps to separate the sexes, and set rules against excess fraternization. How is that supposed to work, when, as I said, it's 24/7? You know, if the services really felt this would or could work, they could make the services completely unisex. No separate quarters, or assignments. They could simply depend upon rules and training to make sure everything worked out. Question. Absent changing the rules to make sure that no one gay could be discharged for innocently revealing that they are gay, why exactly is the "push" on to have gays serve openly? What - besides making them feel "better" about themselves - is that supposed to accomplish toward increasing the effectiveness of the military?

As much as I enjoy Larry Niven's "Third Hand," I don't see how you get to your proposal on even two of the six approaches, when there are almost as many reasons against.

1. The military is not where you do your grand social experiments, especially in a time of war. You can, as you say, order troops to do things, but that surely isn't the basis on which you want this to work.

2. There is no baseline to the experiment. Anybody recruited because of repeal would likely be someone who could not or would not serve under the current policy. Any gay already in the service has managed to live with the policy and any sudden announcements, while unlikely, would certainly affect unit cohesion immediately.

3. It's unnecessary. Surely the number of gays who want to serve their country but cannot bring themselves to do so under current policy is a much smaller number than those who would be bothered by open homosexuality in their midst. The objective of a policy change ought to be to IMPROVE military effectiveness in some way. This doesn't do that.

4. The experiment has already been done. The survey says that at least 20% of the military "thinks" repeal would harm unit cohesion. The fact that they think this means that unit cohesion WOULD be harmed. Just because you can order a man to behave in a certain way towards his fellow soldier doesn't mean you can compel them to THINK in a certain way. Unless the approval number gets to 100%, you've got a problem.

5. You're still talking about behavior, not status. Black enlistees do not have the choice to serve on a DADT basis. Anyone (still) harboring anti-black feelings would know and have time to adjust those feelings. Because gays CAN hide their status, an open admission IS behavior. I understand your concern for the inadvertent slip and sympathize, but the proper policy then lies somewhere between DADT and repeal. Maybe "DADB" (Don't Ask Don't Broadcast)?

6. The experiment is flawed. Telling people they cannot request a transfer out of the unit is deliberately concealing the most likely result-- that those who object would leave the unit, thus by definition destroying "unit cohesion."

First and most important, here are some old advertisements for Shinola to help your readers with that end of the distinction. Those who cannot recognize the other end (so to speak) may be beyond help and are on their own.

I'm afraid I don't buy into your proposal as suggested. It sounds like you are proposing a public experiment where the operational details of the experiment are known to the participants and to the general public. Such an experiment might be worth carrying out as a sort of circus freak show entertainment but, even by the distressingly-low standards of social science, it would stand out more for the hubbub it created than for the data it produced. The combination of attempts to influence the observers and participants, and the Hawthorne Effect written very large indeed would introduce noise into the data that would dwarf the actual effect by orders of magnitude.

Done quietly, with only a few commanding officers and unit administrators knowing about it at all, it could produce meaningful data but any attempt to reveal that data or to make policy based on the data would call down a Shinola-storm of biblical proportions.

Guess I'm a big picture person, but if we allow gays to serve openly, then couldn't they get married or have a civil union if they so choose? If they can do this, how can the government deny a spouse all the dependent privileges that current spouses have? If this happens, then isn't the Federal Defense of Marriage Act pretty much gone, and if that's gone, then we pretty much have to accept any or all unions from state to state!

I guess what I'm saying is that while I don't really have a problem with gays serving in the military, I do have a problem with marrage being redefined, and I do think this is a stepping stone to that end. That is one of the reasons some many gay, activist groups are pushing this. Just my thoughts.

Guess I'm a big picture person, but if we allow gays to serve openly, then couldn't they get married or have a civil union if they so choose? If they can do this, how can the government deny a spouse all the dependent privileges that current spouses have? If this happens, then isn't the Federal Defense of Marriage Act pretty much gone, and if that's gone, then we pretty much have to accept any or all unions from state to state!

I guess what I'm saying is that while I don't really have a problem with gays serving in the military, I do have a problem with marrage being redefined, and I do think this is a stepping stone to that end. That is one of the reasons so many gay, activist groups are pushing this. Just my thoughts.

There's a lot more to this than who showers with whom. As Adm. Mullen's comments hint, it means endless brainwashing: the services essentially ordering members to demonstrate acceptance of homosexual behavior, or else. Examples will have to be made of those who resist; they'll come from the warrior demographic, as in Tailhook, or from among Catholics and Moslems. And the services will need to collect data on whether the policy is "working," which among other things will mean Must Ask, Must Tell. To see how this question can engulf a large organization, look at the Episcopal Church, which survived gender integration of the priesthood only to be shattered by activists pressing the gay issue.

For Pearl Harbor day, in the spirit of James Thurber's "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," I'm working on an alt-hist item titled "If the Japs Had Attacked During Gay Pride Week."

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)

(If you haven't hissed a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Hang loose; don't shed your skin!)

URL:
Remember me unto the end of days? AyeNay!

Comments: (Sssselect text and bite a button to apply HTML tagssssss...)