So Sarn, you are saying that, ideally, you would not be allowed to mention your wife and kid at all while on deployment, to anyone?

Bull ****ing ****.

Send home the homophobe, not the homo.

No, it isn't. DADT is specifically for gays.



Maybe you should try and figure out what your talking about before you open your face.

[eh screw it. I don't really care.]

I'm sorry you're so damn persecuted, Vinny. You poor thing.

Yeah but the decision making process for what to pursue in the MI-complex has nothing to do with prospective usefulness or the interests of science. It's nepotism and old boy clubbing almost to the core.

wtf sarn

Okay.

Yes, groups with large amounts of cultural capital often fail to understand the social issues faced by marginalized groups. Thank you for risking your reputation for intellectual rigor by delivering this lesson in sociology.

DADT was simply a promise not to actively hunt for homosexuals in the military. Homosexuality remained a "legitimate" reason for discharging someone from the military. The gay soldier doesn't even need to tell anyone. An accusation can be made and then the military legal process can start rolling on investigating the allegation.

Major Margaret Witt is a good example: a decorated Air force nurse with a good record who had been in a relationship with a civilian woman for several years in a home a few hundred miles from where she worked. She was ratted out by the ex-husband of a later lover and thus came under investigation despite not telling anyone about her homosexuality. She was then discharged just short of 20 years service and being eligible for a full military pension. Nice justice there.

The argument was that knowledge of her homosexuality negatively affected unit cohesion. Instead, firing her caused at least one resignation in protest. Thankfully in her case she appealed and the air force had to face an "as applied" challenge rather than a facial challenge in which they could use more vague terms about how gays generally ruined morale. Interviewing her colleagues showed that her dismissal had ruined unit cohesion and she won the case and I understand is due to be reinstated. The problem is that this case did not resolve the inherent injustice of DADT and it required someone with the wherewithal, determination, exemplary conduct and fellow decent unit members to win the case.

Another one worth looking up is Victor Fehrenbach. Another serviceman just short of his 20 year service and a decorated fighter pilot with **** knows how much money spent on his training dismissed after being ratted out.

Gays have been serving in your military from the start. But they've been the only ones who face a summary discharge for being who they are, even if they hide it as completely as possible.

Anyway, good luck with the inevitable teething problems. It's all for the best.

Sorry I don't feel like wasting 20-30 minutes of my time to piss you and probably others off without affecting anyone's opinions.

You mean you're out of arguments.

Corrected! See what I did thar?

I'm unsure how you cant get past the language of the rule that Vinny just explicitly posted, as well as the story posted above about a woman discharged because of homosexual acts AT HOME.

In specific, regarding the cases above, do you agree that they should've been discharged? Isn't it enough to see that gays do not ruin 'unit cohesion' AUTOMAGICALLY, and that a blanket ban like DADT is retarded?

Are YOU that intolerant that knowing someone is gay makes you uneasy, or is this something you just notice in fellow soldiers? If so, permission to call you or your fellow serviceman intolerant douche bags (although I still appreciate their service). If not, THEN WHAT IS THE ****ING PROBLEM OF REPEALING IT? I think that is the most important point. Te only reason someone wouldn't want DADT repealed is because they inherently think that gays are different and cause people uneasiness, which is relatively absurd in our generation.

And yes, vinny is marginalized. How can you argue that hes not? Now he's not hung from trees obviously, but relative to 'married people', he most certainly is. It's absurd that we give rights and exemptions for an institution like marriage, yet gays are not offered the same rights or exemptions (varying from state to state, of course)

Yeah, DADT only applied to gay people, and I don't think anyone disagrees that if a soldier spends all their time bragging about their sexual exploits that they're not good soldiers, but I also think that if a soldier is butthurt because one of the people in their unit is gay, they're the problem. DADT was an unnecessarily specific policy that is already covered diligently by behavior guidelines. The only "problems" this will cause are the ones that need to be put an end to instead of bandaged with DADT.

Hey buck, I want to point out the ironic point that sarn is in fact, a sailor.


Also, DADT hasn't been simply repealed. The ban on gays serving openly in the military has been. If DADT was repealed they would have gone back to asking if you were gay and disallowing joining if you were.

I propose that using "butthurt" in discussions such as these is not the most productive if terminology.

...but certainly the most amusing

i am scurred of teh gays raping my butt while i am asleep on base

Ok this is what I don't get. Why has DADT become the focal point of this discussion? I would have thought/expected/hoped that the overall ban on gays serving in the military would have been the rallying point.

I think what you're all forgetting here is that you can't shoot straight when your eyes are watering.

^bahahahahha

The reason you don't affect anyone's opinions, either in this thread or any other, is that your arguments are TERRIBLE. They are poorly thought out, poorly reasoned and riddled with fallacies. If you were astute (which you aren't) you'd notice that plenty of other people have arguments on here and actually DO influence each other's opinions. There's a reason you're never part of those.

yep...

damned if I do, damned if I don't.

That's cute, you still don't get it!

Actually, that's pretty much what it isn't. An allegation, even an admittance, of homosexuality does not justify any process under DADT or at least the current implementation of the policy. Things would be much simpler if the military went back to the pre-DADT policy.

I think Vin already proved that myth wrong.

The military hates fags. That's fine, it's kind of expected of an organization designed to turn people into faceless cogs with no regard for human life.

As an additional exercise, consider the people here who are products of the military.

-Wookie.
-Spook.
-Sarn.

you said products

uhuhuh-huh

I would say in what way but I know that you are referring to the snippet quoted from the regulation that actually doesn't address the "myth" at all.



Wow, you are such a tool. I'm actually pretty surprised at how much you seem to hate the military. It's almost as if you were rejected for service at some point.



That's a nice partial list but if we are actually going to take you up on your exercise, which we aren't, I think the diversity of opinions presented by various veterans on this board conclusively prove one thing. That you are indeed an idiot.

I also have no idea why you three are grouped together. You're all nothing alike.

Spook is a pretty cool guy, and SoldierSnoop was in the army too.

Additionally, consider the people who are the products of the coupling of two people:

• Wookie
• Spook
• Sarn

I rest my case.

Spook seems to be going through some super intellectual phase right now. Basically the Marine is still there but it's getting all gooed up with stuff from college, I think. Snoopy is a very different story. He didn't fit in well in the beginning, thinks he's figured it all out based on his self-idolizing view putting himself above all those he believed were inferior and persecuted him, and now he's in search of higher rank because he hopes he will be able to influence others to his idea of how things should be. It's a somewhat noble idea but fundamentally flawed. The military system is sound. Basically, you have a top-down directive of what needs to be done and subordinate leaders need to understand that their job isn't to change the system but to understand how to assign tasks and motivate people to want to accomplish the mission. If his idealism shifts at least somewhat towards realism he may turn out okay. He's still young.

Yeah, don't want any of that "thinking" garbage getting in there

Quoted for irony.

Actually I didn't include Snoop because I simply had forgotten he existed. I'll give him a few more years for the army to take away his youthful enthusiasm and replace it with a compulsion to shoot everyone he is told is a terrorist.

Have you ever read anything Spook has posted? He certainly doesn't have that view.

snoop != spook

I could swear he just mentioned Snoop and Spook in the same post.

I don't know if he did, but he certainly implied that these "products" of the military all turn out bad, which I tend to think spook would rather disprove. At least for the sake of service men/women on this forum.

The military doesn't make you a homophobe, or a racist, or a murderer, it's just a job.

-If you come out of it a homophobe, racist, or murderer, you were probably one to begin with.

I dunno... the military is typically pretty conservative... even though they actively try recruit those most likely to be liberal (minorities and the poor)... makes you wonder what's really going on.

The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO's Contribution to Warfare

I was gooed up before I got back into school. It doesn't take education to see that the processes being used to reach a goal aren't efficient.

But you're right, the top down directive 'works', if it doesn't run into a billion roadblocks in uniform. And let's not forget the roadblocks behind desks and on ballots.

Yes and no. You can see the trends in the kinds of recruitment ads they use.

Back during the last housing boom, when unskilled labor was in high demand, the recruitment ads focused on the kinds of high-paying jobs you can get after army experience: tech jobs, management, construction work, that sort of thing. Private industry was paying working-class people a lot of money, so the military had a hard time finding enough desperate kids to be bullet magnets.

Right now the recruitment ads are focusing on prestige and power. Very few affluent people sign up for military service, and they invariably go DEO/ROTC - for the prestige, mostly. This is a good thing for the military, because the highest-demand jobs right now are all high-tech officer jobs, all requiring a bachelor's degree and many requiring a trade certificate or professional school on top of it (in the Canadian Forces, I don't know how to search American military jobs by demand.)

It's obvious that the military is interested in people from all economic classes, but their recruitment strategies definitely take advantage of the kinds of people who are attracted to different roles. Of course this fact is hotly disputed, because in the United States everybody is brainwashed to believe they're in the middle class. Nobody wants to admit that they joined just for the GI Bill, or because they had absolutely no hope making a living by doing anything else.