Last week WOAI TY in San Antonio ran a rabid anti-gay rant as pert of its alleged commentary on gays is the military. Part 2 of the series went online today and represents yet another piece of propaganda that reads like it was written by the ever frigid and delusional Elaine Donnelly - the self-styled expert on military readiness who has NO military experience herself. As with the first "comment" WOAI-TY has given a bigot a platform with apparently no comparable countering points of view with equal prominence. The author of today's piece, Merrill R. Darby, clearly comes across as someone who is probably a racist as well and he recites many of the same types of red herrings that were used to argue against allowing blacks to serve in the military. Moreover, like so many of the ranting homophobes, his fixation on gays living with straights suggests to me that he has some issues about his own sexuality. Lastly, the reality is that there are already MANY gays in the military. Mr. Darby needs to get over it. Here are some brief highlights form his rant and my responses:*
Conveniently overlooked is the real possibility that such precipitous social engineering could seriously diminish the future recruitment of young, heterosexual men and women from socially conservative “red state” families and communities. That is where the largest segment of recruits originate; not in liberal, mostly lily-white “blue state” families and communities—and certainly not with the gays themselves. (Homosexual men and women make no more than 5 percent of the U.S. population.)
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I guess since the South provides a disporportionate number of recruits, the racism that still is very wide spread in the south means that blacks should be barred from the military too.
*For many in these backbone groups, Christianity is influential and the Bible is a fundamentally important document. Scriptural condemnation of homosexuality is not just an Old Testament thing, either. It might come as a surprise to some that the New Testament also inveighs against unnatural sex. In Romans 1:18-32, no less than the Apostle Paul warned early Christians against an immoral culture in which women turned away from what was natural and men burned with lust for other men.
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The last time I read the U.S. Constitution, it did not establish Christianity as the state religion nd require that all citizens live according to Christian dictates. I'd further add that many Christians are not of the gay-hating variety which seems to be principally centered in evangelical and fundamentalist denominations. Mr. Darby ought not lump all Christians into the Neanderthal category. In addition, Mr. Darby obviously cares little about the concept of freedom of religion - except for himself and those who hold identical bigoted views.
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Few inside or outside the U.S. military would suggest that servicewomen share living quarters - including showers and toilets - with servicemen (other than temporarily in the austerity of field operations, perhaps). So, why would any rational, objective person urge that young, straight women bunk, shower, and potty with overt lesbians, month in and month out? (The predictable result is a “hostile environment” under the UCMJ.) Sexual harassment in the military is not limited to just men behaving badly against women.
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It strikes me that perhaps Mr. Darby might want to get some mental health counseling and work out his own issues before he tries to dictate how the nation's military should be operated. Lastly, I'd again remind Mr. Darby that the gays are ALREADY in the military - and many are highly decorated and supported by their commands which ignore Don'T Ask, Don't Tell to the maximum extent possible (I had one friend who outed himself and his command begged him to stay in the Navy) . Living in this area, one encounters them daily both inside and outside of gay venues. Bigotry does not belong in the military plain and simple.
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