Marine Corps Idiocy on DADT Repeal

As discussions about ending the religious based discrimination in the military posing under the name of Don't Ask Don't Tell continues, the homophobic Marine Commandant General James Conway (pictured at right) has stated that he'd build separate quarters for gays since some bigots might not want to share quarters with gays. Taking this bigotry to its logical conclusion, I guess Conway would, therefore, need to also build separate quarters for blacks, Hispanics, Jews, - the list goes on and on - so that no Marine Corp. member has to share quarters with their particular form of bigotry dislikes. Of course, a proposal like that pertaining to black troops would end Conway's career. And I guess Conway is willing to allow service members dispensation from following orders and conduct requirements - at least when gays are involved. Not surprisingly, The Palm Center has a pointed response to this asinine proposal. Here are some highlights from the Palm Center response:
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Military experts today expressed concern about Marine Commandant General James Conway’s remarks that he would build new quarters so as not to force gays and straights to room together. Many said his stated rationale could cause the very problems he seeks to prevent. Gen. Conway, who previously expressed resistance to lifting the ban on openly gay service, offered his remarks yesterday in an interview with Military.com. He said that “I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it. And to me that means we have to build BEQs [bachelor enlisted quarters] and have single rooms.”
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Richard H. Kohn, a prominent military historian who was faculty at the Army and National War Colleges, and was Chief of Air Force History for the U.S. Air Force, said that "segregating Marines, as Gen. Conway envisions, might undermine the very cohesion he and other opponents of change say they are trying to protect.”
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Retired Marine General Carl Mundy, one of Conway's predecessors as Commandant of the U.S Marine Corps, opposes openly gay service, but recently said that if repeal is going to happen, “the easiest way to deal with it is to make it as simple as possible. The last thing you even want to think about is creating separate facilities or separate groups or separate meeting places or having four kinds of showers — one of straight women, lesbians, straight men and gay men. That would be absolutely disastrous in the armed forces. It would destroy any sense of cohesion or teamwork or good order and discipline.”
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[F]ormer Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili, said mixed messages from leadership could be toxic, and that it was crucial for top leaders to communicate consistent signals that the force is capable of carrying out new orders. “Given the inevitability of change,” he wrote, “it will be important for senior leaders to send clear signals of support to the rank and file. Every general officer knows that mixed signals undermine leadership.
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According to Retired Rear Admiral Al Steinman, formerly the top-ranked doctor in the Coast Guard, existing rules and regulations regarding “incompatible” roommates already allow unit commanders to deal with problems between roommates, gay or straight. “There is no need to create special regulations that apply only because gay Marines are allowed to be honest about who they are,” said Steinman. He added that “there are already known gay Marines serving in both theaters of war, with the knowledge of their peers and sometimes even of their commands.
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Nathaniel Frank, Senior Research Fellow at the Palm Center, said Conway’s plan is inconsistent with research on gays in the military. “Decades of research, including all of the conclusions of the 1993 RAND study, shows that separating gays and straights is a bad idea,” he said.