The prospect of having openly gay persons serve in the military is sending shivers up the spines of right wing nuts and other bigots.
The Dutch, admittedly somewhat peculiar in that they have a unionized military, report no adverse effects from permitting openly gay citizens to serve. Nor have the Canadian and British forces suffered from their tolerance. The hard right might want to start by explaining how the United States is so different.
On a purely practical level, they should consider the current difficulties faced by the services as they attempt to recruit sufficient qualified volunteers. Given the general reluctance of most Americans to serve, excluding an entire class of citizens seems unwise.
Your correspondent is cheerfully straight, with no desire even to experiment, but knows many gay people. None of them appear to be subhuman, disgusting or, as Leviticus would have it, abominations . They deserve neither ostracism nor to be prohibited from serving their country.
More important, perhaps, are the words of the late Senator Barry Goldwater - a Conservative Republican icon - who said: "you don't have to be straight to shoot straight."
There is much to be said for tolerance.
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Yet another great quotation. I suspect the reluctance of the Marine Corps Commandant is based on the unrealistic notion that gay Marines are a comparitively recent occurrence. As a counter-argument, I would refer him to William Manchester's "Goodbye Darkness". But then, as a civilian, what would I know?
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