National Coming Out Day

[Wiglaf]

Ming

But Wiglaf IS the topic. It's because of fools like him that we even HAVE a National Coming Out Day. It's purpose is to try to give gays an opportunity to artificially feel they have the courage to come out of the closet in a society that is still somewhat hostile to homosexuals. Further, it's fools like him who oppose equal protection in the workplace and show an undying devotion to ignoring facts whenever they get in the way of their goals of discriminating against gays. He refuses to accept what the polls of active service personnel, the very troops he feels will be irreparably harmed by gays,

When did I ever talk about equal protection in the workplace. And my questions about your poll, as well as darius', are completely reasonable...

Sure.

In any case, does that mean we would have to give them the same seperation that men/women have? Please tell me how I am supposed to divide a frigate's berthing four ways when it is nearly impossible (and very inefficient) to divide it two ways.

This seems like sort of a trivial issue. Anyway, his statistic is BS/misleading, as we've established.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Edan


In my admittedly annecdotal experience, though, gay people who tend to be more conservative tend to be more likely to be in the closet. Whether it's because being conservative makes you more closeted, or whether being closeted influences you into being more conservative I don't know. I would guess it's more likely to be the former, but I think the latter can be true in some cases, too.

I know that, but I delibrately twisted it around to show that there are always exceptions to the old presumptions.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
http://online.logcabin.org/

Yes . . . .


and I suppose there are worse tragedies than the existence of this organization.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by MrFun
If you read the explanation I provided about the whole concept and purpose of "coming out and being out" you would realize that it's about being open, honest, and behaving in same ways that are deemed appropriate for straight people.

Do you complain when straight people "push their sexual orientation in your face?"

Yes. For example, the whole rap-gangsta thing: calling women "ho" or "b1tch," thinking "back that @ss up" is a pick-up line, etc.

I used to have to listen to that crap for hours when some people would rent a meeting room for a party.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MrFun
Yes . . . .


and I suppose there are worse tragedies than the existence of this organization.

See! He's way too boring to be gay.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by MrFun
If you read the explanation I provided about the whole concept and purpose of "coming out and being out" you would realize that it's about being open, honest, and behaving in same ways that are deemed appropriate for straight people.

Do you complain when straight people "push their sexual orientation in your face?"

Yes. For example, the whole rap-gangsta thing: calling women "ho" or "b1tch," thinking "back that @ss up" is a pick-up line, etc.

I used to have to listen to that crap for hours when some people would rent a meeting room for a party.

In my opinion, such sexually explicit expressions in public like gangsta rap is not appropriate for anyone, of either sexual orientation.

You're giving the most extreme or bizarre examples when I'm talking about other forms of behavior that are generally acceptable in everyday conversation and interaction.

[DRoseDARs]

Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates June '07 poll of Republicans

While the Log Cabin Republicans were one of the Republican groups underwriting this poll, it was a blind poll presumably in that none of the groups underwriting it knew what questions would be asked or how they would be worded. Also, FMA has a VERY Republican and Big Industry-heavy client list: http://www.fabmac.com/client.html , so it's safe to say they aren't exactly a liberal outfit. I'm genuinely surprised by the *cough* liberal *cough* stance Republicans as a whole actually have on gays. It's also interesting that the pollsters didn't ask about gay marriage or civil unions. Very odd, however of all respondents, only 5% were concerned about "Traditional Marriage / Family Values" so I guess it really IS just an election year issue as far as Republicans are concerned. Maybe they're just maxing-out their rage glands over illegal immigration.

Zogby December '06 poll of active service US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan

Number 24 is where the 73% figure comes from, referring to how many are comfortable serving alongside gays. Only 19% said they'd be uncomfortable. Number 27 shows 78% would still have joined the military if gays were allowed to serve openly (vs 10% who would not have), so even MORE support than I originally had heard. But some of the results in this poll are odd and in conflict with one another. Although 73% say they'd be comfortable and 78% said they still would have joined, only 26% said gays should be allowed to serve openly vs 37% said they should not. For those who knew of gays in their unit, numbers 20 and 21 state 66% said no impact on their personal morale vs 28% who said negative, while 64% said no impact vs 27% negative impact on their unit's morale. For those who didn't know or unsure of gays in their unit, numbers 22 and 23 state 49% said no impact on their personal morale vs 38% who said negative, while 26% said no impact vs 58% negative impact on their unit's morale.

I imagine the explanation for the odd results comes from the order in which the questions were asked. The questions on whether gays should be allowed to serve and what their impacts would be on both the respondent's morale as well as what they think their unit's morale would be came before asking the respondents whether they personally would be comfortable alongside openly gay members. Politically, that 73% overall comfort broke down into Democrats at 73%, Republicans at 72%, and Independents at 81% being comfortable.

Zogby breaks the numbers down even further between genders, age groups, service length, military branch, ethnicities, religions, political affiliation as mentioned before, active duty or veteran, as well as degrees of perceived positive and negative answers (shades of gray) and so on.

Although this poll isn't exactly what I heard it was and despite some odd numbers, it does firm up my belief that the grunts on the ground DO support gays serving openly alongside them, that the brass and the politicians are just pulling the same crap they did with women, which is the same crap they pulled with blacks.

[Nubclear]

Have any actual arguments been given in this thread yet, rather than mere assertion ("THE MILITARY WILL COLLAPSE!!11" etc)?

[MrFun]

Way to go, Drose.

[Wiglaf]

I love being right

Number 27 shows 78% would still have joined the military if gays were allowed to serve openly

Completely meaningless.

Number 24 is where the 73% figure comes from, referring to how many are comfortable serving alongside gays.

Meaningless..

The point is whether open homosexuality is a good idea. Over 70% of respondents say it's not in the army.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by MrFun
Way to go, Drose.

I don't understand the pat on the back given that he derailed his own argument:

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
only 26% said gays should be allowed to serve openly vs 37% said they should not.

And lo and behold, as I expected this poll was crafted for a "client" to boot, which is why I'm always suspicious of anything from Zogby. As much as this Michael D. Palm Center purports to do nothing more than "promote the interdisciplinary analysis of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other marginalized sexual identities in the armed forces by forging a community of scholars, creating a forum for information exchange and debate," almost every news release and publication on its site betrays at least an implicit bias for allowing open homosexuality in the military.

Or for that matter, you can get an idea of what results the "client" hoped for just by googling the name of the MDPC director who elicited the report. It's fairly clear where he stands on the issue:

“Breaking Rank: Military Homophobia and the Production of Queer Practices and Identities”, Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, vol. 3, no. 1, 2001, pp. 83-106.

American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, September 2000: “Breaking Rank: Military Homophobia and the Emergence of Queer Identity.”

“The Pentagon’s Gay Ban is Not Based on Military Necessity,” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 41, no. 1, 2001, pp. 103-119.

“Pink and Blue: Outcomes Associated with the Integration of Open Gay And Lesbian Personnel in the San Diego Police Department,” with Jason Mcnichol, Police Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1, 2002, pp. 63-95.

“Homosexuality and the Israel Defense Forces; Did Lifting the Gay Ban Undermine Military Performance?” with Melissa Levitt, Armed Forces and Society, vol. 27, no. 4, 2001, pp. 541-566.

“Homosexual Personnel Policy of the Canadian Forces; Did Lifting the Gay Ban Undermine Military Performance?” with Jason McNichol, International Journal, vol. 56, no. 1, 2001, pp. 73-88.

“Reply to Schumm’s Argument That Ending the Gay Ban Will Morally ‘Injure’ Some Service Members,” Psychological Reports, vol. 96, no. 2, 2005, pp. 334-336.

“Officially Gay: The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U.S. Military,” by Gary Lehring, in Armed Forces and Society, vol. 31, no. 3, 2005.

“Gay Warriors: A Documentary History from the Ancient World to the Present,” by B.R. Burg, in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 11, no. 4, 2002.

www.polsci.ucsb.edu/faculty/bios/Belkin_vita.pdf+%22aaron+belkin%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us]www.polsci.ucsb.edu/faculty/bios/Belkin_vita.pdf[/url]

The problem is that the Pentagon's current personnel policy is utterly irrational. Under its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, it has fired over 11,000 capable troops, including nearly 1000 considered mission-critical and over 300 foreign linguists, just because they're gay. This despite overwhelming evidence that letting known gays serve does not impair cohesion, recruitment or effectiveness.

...

The military would be far better served if, instead of yielding to political expediency and moral animus, it better monitored and assisted recruits who really are prone to misbehavior, while taking a hard look at the data which show that allowing gays and lesbians to serve would improve the armed forces.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-...s_b_41207.html

I think we have a long way to go. This policy is deeply locked in. Attitudes are changing, 64 percent of the publics says gays should serve openly. It's a question of whether politicians will show the courage to move the military on to the right side of history.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...11/lol.05.html

Disclaimer: This is by no means to be taken as any argument for or against Belkin's views. I'm only griping about how Zogby polls are toilet paper generally.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Darius871
I don't understand the pat on the back given that he derailed his own argument:

Except that's not what happened at all. As I explicitly pointed out, an over-whelming majority said they had no problem with serving alongside openly gay soldiers. I openly pointed out the discrepancy and offered a good explanation as to why the numbers were that way: The order in which they were asked would influence how people answered, regardless of the very neutral wording of the questions asked. Which is the larger number, 26% (yes to allowing gays to serve openly) or 73% (I'm comfortable serving alongside openly gay soldiers)? By 47%, the number who said they were comfortable with gays is much larger than the number who answered positively to the earlier question that gays be allowed to serve openly. They were asked a general question first, then later in the poll were asked more specific questions about their feelings on the complex issue. It'd be like me asking a polling sample, "Legalize abortion: Yes or no?" with only 26% answering positively. Ten questions later I go back to the issue and fleshing it out a bit with questions like, "If abortion was banned nationally and there was a rise in the deaths of women due to them seeking illegal abortions, would you still support a ban on abortions?" or questions like, "If a pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, would you support a limited ban on abortions that would make an exception for such scenarios?" Suddenly, we might see the polling sample answering more positively to legalizing abortions in special cases. Were they lying before when the majority answered "No" to the "Legalize abortion" question, or have they been given the opportunity to access a complex issue with a more critical eye, allowing their actual opinion on the subject to come out? This poll on gays in the military is exactly the same: The simple "Yes or no?" question was asked first for the reflex answer and later, more specific questions trying to identify actual opinions on the matter were asked. Just like my abortion analogy, it's the later questions that matter more because they provide a much clearer picture of how the respondent regards the given issue, as neither issue is as simple black-and-white, yes-or-no.

And lo and behold, as I expected this poll was crafted for a "client" to boot, which is why I'm always suspicious of anything from Zogby. As much as this Michael D. Palm Center purports to do nothing more than "promote the interdisciplinary analysis of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other marginalized sexual identities in the armed forces by forging a community of scholars, creating a forum for information exchange and debate," almost every news release and publication on its site betrays at least an implicit bias for allowing open homosexuality in the military.

Or for that matter, you can get an idea of what results the "client" hoped for just by googling the name of the MDPC director who elicited the report. It's fairly clear where he stands on the issue:

Disclaimer: This is by no means to be taken as any argument for or against Belkin's views. I'm only griping about how Zogby polls are toilet paper generally.

And lo and behold, unsurprisingly you don't seem to have bothered even looking at the poll questions themselves nor the methodology used in conducting the poll. You seem to have only looked at who the poll results were submitted to and reflexively assumed the MDPC wrote the poll themselves. This wasn't a push poll, it wasn't slanted one way or another, and it followed an industry-recognized set of ethical guidelines for polling. You saw one small part (the most irrelevant part, no less) and as such, dismissed the whole. It'd be like me living under a rock these past few years and emerging just this week to hear Bush had vetoed the S-CHIP bill from Congress and as such, dismissing the whole of Bush's term in office. That isn't a good way of assessing Bush's presidency and it isn't a good way of assessing a poll.

[Nubclear]

But nobody is actually putting impacts to these statements. What does it matter what the troops think in some random poll?

[DRoseDARs]

Except it wasn't "some random poll." It was a professionally conducted poll by a well-established and widely-respected organization. The homophobes (And not just the ones here: Sen. John McCain comes to mind...) keep bleating on and on about how the troops will be damaged by the presence of Teh Gheys. Problem is, the troops they're talking about say the presence of Teh Gheys really holds little or no effect, some even going so far to say it would hold a positive effect (I'm guessing they were the gay soldiers. ). You have to understand, the respondents in this poll are active duty and veteran troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan (or "in combat roles directly supporting those operations" which I assume means service personnel stationed on ships or on bases near those two theaters like a base in Kuwait or an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean) and this poll shows the ones who answered that they did indeed know of gays serving alongside them overwhelmingly said that their presence had little or no effect on either their morale or their unit's. For those who answered that they didn't know or were unsure of gays serving alongside them, the majority said their personal morale would not be much effected, but thought the unit's would be.

It's quite clear that for those soldiers who have actual exposure to gays serving alongside them, the majority find that they have no real problem with it. Those soldiers that remain unaware of serving alongside gays remain unaware of whether or not their reservations about doing so are valid and as such err on the side of caution.

This isn't a difficult poll to digest. The support is higher than I expected, but I don't find it surprising that the majority is generally (overwhelmingly on some questions) OK with gays across the board. It's aberrant that the majority answered "No" to the early yes-or-no question about gays serving openly but again, I feel that's only because of the order in which the poll questions were asked. Frankly, I'm pleased that it was asked first and later followed up by more in-depth questions. Homophobes will latch onto the early stuff and will be made to look too quick to judgement ("stupid" works too) upon further investigation of the poll.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Wittlich

And this same argument was used when African Americans were first introduced into our military...so what is your point Wiglaf?

I'm late to this thread but Wittlich does have a point. The entire excuse for racial segregation in the military (and incidentally for originally organizing units based on geographical areas instead of based on skill sets as we now do) was that allowing different races or even just whites from different states to work together would harm unit moral and cohesion. Clearly this has been proven wrong despite a few hick ups.

Mr Fun: Excellent OP.

edit: Hell, originally it was said women shouldn't be allowed to work outside of the home because it would distract male workers and lead to sexual sin. The truth is people can control themselves and society is more creative and productive because we have so many more skilled workers.