CBS News Report on U.S. Military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy

[Patroklos]

nothing says "good use of government time and equipment" by having the MAC wear NVGs to try to catch some sailors ****ing on the aft missile deck.

HA! So true!

I used the bridge wing lookouts, but good example. Wouldn't it have been a better use of their time to look out for, you know, other ships?

The best scam I discovered concerning this was a racket run my one of my SH3s. For a modest fee he would lock a couple (or more ) in the soda storeroom for a hour. Me, doing my rounds on my spaces (I usually did them two/three times a day depending on my watch schedule) would come by, see the lock was intact, and think nothing of it.

And it would have stayed that way, except sounding and security (an engineering watch where two guys constently walk the ship looking for flooding and other problems) heard noises coming from the space and busted the enterprise right open.

Soda sales suffered

[Asher]

All of this navy talk is turning me on. Talk dirty to me, sailor.

[Patroklos]

So you mean that you can train young men to do the things you mentioned above, in spite of their complete lack of maturity and intelligence in PERSONAL matters.

Knowledge has nothing to do with maturity. I can teach a 17 year old everything he needs to know to plot a fix on a chart, and I will supervise/check up on him as he does so to make sure he does what he supposed to if it is my watch. But like I said I can't train him on how to not make googly eyes at seamen STD across the mess decks, I would have better luck training him to sleep with his eyes open. Nor will I be there to tell him he is a ****** when he takes her into the repair locker for some lovin.

I am sure you have met teenagers before. I imagine you were one at some point. Now take those teenagers, remove them from momma teet for the first time in their lives, give them money for the first time in their lives, stick them in a steel box for 6 months with a few hundred other wet behind the ear kids, and watch what happens.

And it is sad but true, the easiest way for a female sailor to make "friends" at a new command is the same way it is everywhere. And after 5 months in the Gulf you might not be considered ugly for the first time in your life.

Okay, so for this reason, you believe the U.S. military forces can only consist of straight men at the exclusion of gay men, straight women, and lesbians.

That would be the simpilist answer, and the most effective I my opinion. But if you can think of another, I will listen.

But maybe this simply means, as I have implied/stated earlier, that if our military forces are relying on immature, sexually insecure "brats" for recruits we have to change something in our recruitment procedures?

Change them to what Mr. Fun? That is what teenagers are! Like I said you can start recruiting at 35 if you want, or maybe will just castrate everybody. Where are your magical 1 million mature life savy non sex obsessed 17-20 year olds you speak of?

If a young straight man cannot cope with working with gay men, lesbians, or straight women in the military, that might say a lot about that young man's inability to function as a responsible adult

Nobody said that, but just like we don't expect straight men and woman to cope by showering/living together, we should not expect anything different concerning gays.

in SPITE of the fact that you say you can still train him to adequately perform his field/combat duties. So why the continued reliance on immature "brats" for recruits in our U.S. military?

I can train them to do those duties, but the stresses of deployed life affect your duties a well. How effective is a young 17 year old barbie looking girl going to be when every day she gets leered at by 100 20-45 year old men in the shower every day? That is in effect what you are asking a straigh or gay guy to do, and you haven't given a reason why that would be different.

By the way, I still want to hear from you about how Great Britain and Israel seem to be doing just fine with integration of gay men, straight women, and lesbians. As I've already said; the sky has not fallen down on them because of this.

I will have to do some research, but I will go ahead and say.

1.) You have to have combat effectivness in the first place to have it affected :P

2.) Their operational tempo is a joke compared to us. Less stressors period make it easier to deal with the ones you are subjected to.

All of this navy talk is turning me on. Talk dirty to me, sailor.

[Ramo]

This is a pretty simple question to resolve. Since there are countries out there that are a lot more tolerant on gay rights than we are, empiricism serves us well. Let's see what happened to the Brits' combat effectiveness:

Gay Britons Serve in Military With Little Fuss, as Predicted Discord Does Not Occur
By SARAH LYALL

LONDON, May 20 — The officer, a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, felt he had no choice. So he stood up in front of his squad of 30 to 40 people.

“I said, ‘Right, I’ve got something to tell you,’ ” he said. “ ‘I believe that for us to be able to work closely together and have faith in each other, we have to be honest and open and frank. And it has to be a two-way process, and it starts with me baring my soul. You may have heard some rumors, and yes, I have a long-term partner who is a he, not a she.’ ”

Far from causing problems, he said, he found that coming out to his troops actually increased the unit’s strength and cohesion. He had felt uneasy keeping the secret “that their boss was a poof,” as he put it, from people he worked with so closely.

Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears — about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness — have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue.

The Ministry of Defense does not compile figures on how many gay men and lesbians are openly serving, and it says that the number of people who have come out publicly in the past seven years is still relatively low. But it is clearly proud of how smoothly homosexuals have been integrated and is trying to make life easier for them.

“What we’re hoping to do is to, over a period of time, reinforce the message that people who are gay, lesbian and the like are welcomed in the armed forces and we don’t discriminate against them in any way,” a Defense Ministry official said in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with the ministry’s practice.

Nonetheless, the issue is extremely delicate now. The military does not want to be seen bragging about the success of its policy when the issue can still cause so much anguished debate in the United States. This is particularly true in light of tensions between the allies after a British coroner ruled in March that a British soldier who died four years ago was unlawfully killed by an American pilot.

For this article, the Defense Ministry refused to give permission for any member of the forces to be interviewed, either on or off the record. Those who spoke did so before the ministry made its position clear.

“We’re not looking to have quotes taken out of context in a way to imply that we’re trying to influence the debate in the United States,” the British official said. “There are some sensitivities over the timing of this. We have had communications from our counterparts in the United States, and they have asked us questions about how we’ve handled it and how it’s gone on the ground. There does seem to be some debate going on over how long the current policy will be sustainable.”

The debate in the United States was rekindled in March when Gen. Peter Pace, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the country’s top-ranking military official, told The Chicago Tribune that he believed that homosexuality was immoral.

In January, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who until his retirement in 1997 held the same post in the Clinton years, when the Pentagon adopted its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, said in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times that he now believed that the military was ready to accept gay men and lesbians. A military already stretched thin, he said, “must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.”

At least 24 countries — many of them allies of the United States, and some of them members of the coalition forces fighting alongside Americans — now allow gay soldiers to serve openly in their armed forces.

It is hard to avoid comparing the British and American systems, gay soldiers in the British forces say.

One major, an openly gay liaison officer in the British Territorial Army, told of an exchange he had in the southern Iraq city of Basra with an American staff sergeant, far from home and eager to confide.

“He privately let me know he was gay,” the major said in an interview. “Not in a romantic way, but in a matter-of-fact way. He found it difficult, because he clearly had a whole part of his private life that he had to keep separate and distinct and couldn’t discuss with people. He was in his mid-30s, with no girlfriend and no wife, and he had to use all these white lies.”

Some Britons said they could not understand why the United States had not changed its policy.

“I find it strange, coming from the land of the free and freedom of speech and democracy, given the changes in the world attitude,” said the gay squadron leader, who recently returned from Afghanistan. “It’s just not the issue it used to be.”

Until its policy changed, the British military had deep misgivings about allowing homosexuals to serve openly in its armed forces. But it had no choice. It was forced to by a European court, which ruled that its policy of excluding homosexuals violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

“There was a lot of apprehension among some senior personnel that there would be an increase in things like bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation, and some of them were almost predicting that the world was going to come to an end,” the Defense Ministry official said.

Similar concerns were raised when, bowing to national antidiscrimination laws, the military began allowing gay personnel who had registered for civil partnerships to live in military housing with their same-sex partners. “But all the problems the services thought were going to come to pass really haven’t materialized,” the official said.

To the extent it becomes an issue, it is usually within the context of the relentlessly rough give-and-take that characterizes military life, particularly at the lower ranks, said Nathaniel Frank, a researcher at the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the British experience.

“The military is a proving ground, and the first thing people do is find your weakness and exploit it,” Mr. Frank said in an e-mail interview. “If you’re gay, that’s your weakness, and guys will latch on to that. But frequently this is no more significant a weakness than any other based on your accent, body type, race, religion, etc.”

The British military actively recruits gay men and lesbians and punishes any instance of intolerance or bullying. The Royal Navy advertises for recruits in gay magazines and has allowed gay sailors to hold civil partnership ceremonies on board ships and, last summer, to march in full naval uniform at a gay pride rally in London. (British Army and Royal Air Force personnel could march but had to wear civilian clothes.)

Speaking at a conference sponsored by the gay advocacy group Stonewall last year, Vice Adm. Adrian Johns, the second sea lord, said that homosexuals had always served in the military but in the past had had to do it secretly.

“That’s an unhealthy way to be, to try and keep a secret life in the armed services,” said Admiral Johns, who as the Royal Navy’s principal personnel officer is responsible for about 39,000 sailors. His speech was titled “Reaping the Rewards of a Gay-Friendly Workplace.”

“Those individuals need nurturing, so that they give of their best and are, in turn, rewarded for their effort,” he said of the Royal Navy’s gay men and lesbians. “Nurture includes the freedom to be themselves. Our mission is to break down barriers of discrimination, prejudice, fear and misunderstanding.”

Once the news is out there, the gay Royal Air Force squadron leader said, the issue gets subsumed by the job at hand and by the relentless immediacy of war.

At one point, his squad was working with a British Army unit. “I wouldn’t go into a briefing room and face them and say, ‘By the way, I’m gay,’ ” he said of his British Army counterparts. “Frankly, I don’t think they were worried, because we were all focused on doing a very, very hard job.”

He recalled something his commander had said, when advising him to come out to his squad:

“The boss said, ‘I think you will be surprised that in this day and age it will be a complete anticlimax, because as far as I’m concerned, homosexuals in the military are yesterday’s news.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/world/europe/21britain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

The biggest problem from this change seemed to be handling relations with the US...

[Patroklos]

The Ministry of Defense does not compile figures on how many gay men and lesbians are openly serving, and it says that the number of people who have come out publicly in the past seven years is still relatively low.

If this is true, I guess we can throw out all claims about "it had no effect."

[Ramo]

That doesn't make any sense. We're talking about a policy of allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, not a policy forcing gay people in the military to come out.

And I don't know what "relatively low" is supposed to mean, exactly.

[Patroklos]

That doesn't make any sense. We're talking about a policy of allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, not a policy forcing gay people in the military to come out.

You can't measure something that you don't know anything about.

And I don't know what "relatively low" is supposed to mean, exactly.

Exactly.

[Ramo]

Gay people also serve openly in the IDF. This isn't exactly a society where the military is irrelevant. If combat effectiveness were reduced, surely we'd hear something (so far, I'm not finding anything on teh interwebs)...

[Ramo]

I repeat: Your argument makes absolutely no sense. We're talking about a policy of allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, not a policy forcing gay people in the military to come out. Whether or not a particular gay person in the military wants to publicly come out is completely irrelevant to the question at hand.

[MrFun]

thanks for that info, Ramo


Oh, and Pat, what would you think about changing minimum age recruitment, to say, 25?

[Ramo]

IIRC, Canada and Australia also allow gay people to openly serve, and there are a couple dozen other countries (though, obviously, their militaries are not as utilized as the Israelis or Brits). Surely, if this were a bad idea, we'd see actual problems in even one of these countries...

[Patroklos]

Oh, and Pat, what would you think about changing minimum age recruitment, to say, 25?

I think that would still not cover our recruiting needs numbers wise. Nor or physical needs, by 22-23 most people are on the decline physically, not normally a good time to start airborne school/BUDS/TBS or anything similar.

Also, you need to look at the why people serve. Some people think it is a romantic obligation, something to do for a few years and then go to civilian life. Some look at it as a way to catapult yourself into a good civilian job after doing your time. Some use it to straighten themselves out.

At 25, well, most people have started a career or at least established themselves into a lifestyle/field. They would be much more reluctant to leave that. You probably have a wife and kid now, and joing the military when you are a attachment free 17 year old with the world ahead of you is different than joining when you have a family. If you were going to use it to straighten yourself out, what were you doing until you were 25?

Most officers are commisioned at 22. If you had a full academy regime you were basically enlisted for four years. If you had an ROTC type program you got a fee education for doing **** nothing, and it will show when you get into the field/fleet. However, it does prove that joining as old as 22-23 is possible.

I don't think it is possible to raise the age threshold to anything older than 19.

[Patroklos]

Surely, if this were a bad idea, we'd see actual problems in even one of these countries...

Why? I could man Latvia's army with spider monkeys and you would never know the difference. You have to put the organization under sustained stress to see where the weaknesses are.

[Ramo]

The IDF isn't under sustained stress? Seriously?

[Patroklos]

The IDF isn't under sustained stress? Seriously?

I said I would look into it. Can I drive home from work first or is it urgent?