Having listened to your wise observations during the most recent debate, i feel compelled to say that i find your ingenuousness touching. you want to bring back 'don't ask, don't tell,' not because of homophobia, but because "any sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military.'' i would like to help you out by mentioning a few problems with this stance.
to begin with, DADA began fairly recently, during the Clinton administration, not because anyone, gay or straight, was engaging in sexual activity, but because homosexuals were being kicked out of the military exclusively because of their orientation. clinton, you may recall, was a democrat, and considered, too liberal by your party. far from being instituted in the good-old-days, DADA was a late-20th century political act designed, however poorly, to help gays who wished [god knows why] to enlist and remain in what is called ''service to our country.''
since it was not about sexual acts but about sexual preferences, it forbade gays, but not straights, to acknowledge anything about their lives in conversations or in what the semiologists call 'signs.' every time a straight person uses an expression like 'my boyfriend,' 'my wife,' etc., s/he is making a declaration of heterosexuality [unless they come from one of the handful of states that recognizes gay marriage]. in the wonderful long-ago phrase of filmmaker micki dickof, homosexuals have been required to use 'monday morning pronouns,' carefully crafting each sentence into sounding like the person referred to is the opposite gender. this means that the problem goes far beyond actually having sex at a given moment or in a given place; it permeates any social interaction, however casual.
and--oh, dear, i do hate to burst your peculiar little bubble--but in fact, 'sexual activity' does occur in the military. sometimes, even among heterosexuals, people forget the rules against fornication. wicked, i know, but we must face the terrible truth: not everyone remains a virgin until the wedding night.
however, i suspect you already realize this, which leads me to believe that you have come up with a fascinating ''social experiment'' far beyond the simple idea of allowing people to acknowledge their own sexuality: your idea of creating an all-celibate military is a daring one, and i, for one, would love to see it implemented and to watch the consequences unfold. but as you yourself said, this is no time for social experiments in the military, so, sadly, i must ask you to defer it until a more peaceful era. instead, just let people in the military be themselves within the limits of propriety--as mrs. campbell said a century ago, 'as long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses.'
respectfully yours, etc.
to begin with, DADA began fairly recently, during the Clinton administration, not because anyone, gay or straight, was engaging in sexual activity, but because homosexuals were being kicked out of the military exclusively because of their orientation. clinton, you may recall, was a democrat, and considered, too liberal by your party. far from being instituted in the good-old-days, DADA was a late-20th century political act designed, however poorly, to help gays who wished [god knows why] to enlist and remain in what is called ''service to our country.''
since it was not about sexual acts but about sexual preferences, it forbade gays, but not straights, to acknowledge anything about their lives in conversations or in what the semiologists call 'signs.' every time a straight person uses an expression like 'my boyfriend,' 'my wife,' etc., s/he is making a declaration of heterosexuality [unless they come from one of the handful of states that recognizes gay marriage]. in the wonderful long-ago phrase of filmmaker micki dickof, homosexuals have been required to use 'monday morning pronouns,' carefully crafting each sentence into sounding like the person referred to is the opposite gender. this means that the problem goes far beyond actually having sex at a given moment or in a given place; it permeates any social interaction, however casual.
and--oh, dear, i do hate to burst your peculiar little bubble--but in fact, 'sexual activity' does occur in the military. sometimes, even among heterosexuals, people forget the rules against fornication. wicked, i know, but we must face the terrible truth: not everyone remains a virgin until the wedding night.
however, i suspect you already realize this, which leads me to believe that you have come up with a fascinating ''social experiment'' far beyond the simple idea of allowing people to acknowledge their own sexuality: your idea of creating an all-celibate military is a daring one, and i, for one, would love to see it implemented and to watch the consequences unfold. but as you yourself said, this is no time for social experiments in the military, so, sadly, i must ask you to defer it until a more peaceful era. instead, just let people in the military be themselves within the limits of propriety--as mrs. campbell said a century ago, 'as long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses.'
respectfully yours, etc.
1 comment:
Love the Campbell quote . . . you make eminently reasonable points. Therefore you will branded a wild-eyed liberal who is sanctioning the moral downfall of America.
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