Anti-gay policy harshest on U.S. service women
October 26th, 2009
Candace Talmadge
The U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (DADT) toward homosexual members of the armed forces is more accurately described as “snitch and ditch.”
Under this odious law, passed by Congress in 1993, the military command is not to look into or inquire about (“don’t ask”) the sexual orientation of potential recruits or active service members without evidence of disallowed behavior.
Snitch and ditch.
Recruits and service members, for their part, may not engage in homosexual conduct or openly talk (“don’t tell”) about their sexual orientation or same-sex relationships while serving in the military.
The wording of the DADT statute attempted to remove the president’s authority over military separations.
A different law passed a decade earlier, however, granted presidents the authority to suspend all laws, including the subsequent DADT, relating to military promotion, retirement, and separation, according to Nathaniel Frank, senior fellow at The Palm Center. The center is a think tank at the University of California-Santa Barbara that specializes in research on gender, sexuality and the military.
In other words, President Barack Obama is dodging the issue when he maintains that Congress must act first to overturn DADT.
DADT was supposed to outlaw harassment of gays in the military. It hasn’t. The mere suspicion of homosexual orientation usually sets off a career-ending investigation (”snitch and ditch”). DADT also falls most heavily on enlisted women, according to The Palm Center’s research.
Since 1993, females have received 61 percent of total Air Force DADT-related discharges, even though they represent just 20 percent of that service branch; women received 36 percent of DADT-related discharges in the Army, where they are 14 percent of personnel; 23 percent of such discharges in the Navy, where they comprise 14 percent; and 18 percent of DADT-related discharges in the Marines, where they are just 6 percent.
There are two possible explanations for these disproportionate discharges, Frank says. The first is that a higher percentage of women enlisting are gay. The other explanation, and the one he thinks is more likely, is the “macho” culture that is pervasive and enduring throughout all branches of the armed forces and that leads to sexual harassment. A male colleague or officer makes advances toward a woman, and if she does not respond, accuses her of being a lesbian, setting off an investigation into her sexual orientation.
“The military regards women and gays as a threat to a fragile male identity,” adds Frank, author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America. “Women are at much greater risk of being outed by an angry male” than men. The practice is known as lesbian baiting.
One former service member profoundly affected by this poisonous policy is Lt. Col. Edith Disler, who used to be an instructor at the United States Air Force Academy. As Congress and the military’s top brass discuss ending the ban on gays, Disler invited a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender academy graduates into her class for a talk with students. Disler told The Palm Center that she received approval to do so from her course director and that no written policy requiring approval from a higher level existed.
The week after the visit, Disler was removed from the classroom after a 25-year career, investigated for having possibly violated policies, procedures, or “classroom decorum,” and reprimanded with a letter of counseling inserted into her record. She has since retired from the military.
“What happened to Edie is a disgrace,” says Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, an Air Force Academy graduate who knows Disler and is the president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. “They turned her into a sacrificial whipping boy.” He praised Disler as an outstanding career officer and the embodiment of the sacrifice and commitment to country required of members of the armed forces.
“The day we finally get rid of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is the day I go out and buy some Dom Perignon,” Weinstein adds. The 75 percent of Americans who support gays serving openly in the military will raise a glass with him.
(Talmadge blogs at StoneScribe.)
Posted in Candace Talmadge
8 Responses to “Anti-gay policy harshest on U.S. service women”
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75 percent of Americans supporting gays serving openly in the military is as bogus as Global Warming and flat earth. Why include extreme lies with your opinion Candace? Your statement, “The U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (DADT) toward homosexual members of the armed forces is more accurately described as “snitch and ditch.” is right on. But that is the way the law was intended. The very small percentage of people that do support open gays in the military do not even think about the true scenarios: 350 guys down in a birthing area of a ship in the Navy or Marine corps trying to deal with the terrorist of the day and also having to deal with a gay dude looking at their ass while they are dressing. Most of the issues with gay’s in the military isn’t the extreme right trying to keep civil liberties away from a gay person. It is having to deal with the massive amount of unnatural issues that this absurd combining of human interaction, produces. To be more accurate Candace, why don’t you say that 75 percent of Gays want to be able to serve openly in the military. I suppose you join the people who say that since gays supported Obama to get him elected then Obama has a mandate to do what ever they want. Get this in your head Candace Talmadge. If Obama has 75 percent of Americans support for any extreme radical anything, he will instantly implement it. Since 99% of the people reject open gays in the military, he is not really wanting to deal with this issue.
@davidkfuller:
Where on earth do you come from? This is the 21st century. You obviously haven’t looked at the national polls lately. 75 percent is slightly high, but it’s very close to that. It’s slightly less in the military itself, but it’s still a solid majority.
And don’t flatter yourself. If you think every gay guy would want to look at your ass, you’re sadly deluded.
Keep em the hell out!! The only thing wrond with Dont Ask Dont Tell is that the dumb ass pervs shouldne’t be allowed in their to begin with. Listen up; if you is gay – dont join the army dumbass!!
Aloysius if you are talking about the Post-ABC poll…..well then you basically believe anything anyone tells you.
Go ahead and poll a 1000 Marines. Your happy reaction will return back to sad. I will say you would get about 1 percent but that 1 percent is gay.
You seem to think I have a hate on for gays, I don’t. I just don’t think they should be in the Military, and I don’t appreciate B.S polling and B.S spewing of those polls.
There is no justification for homosexuality.
If it is a product of mere evolution, then let the fights begin or remain in their search for survival. It is not our responsibility to wait millions of years for homosexuals to evolve the ability to procreate.
If it isn’t evolution and it is being claimed a moral mandate asserting itself for justification, the only true source of morality is Biblical. Since the Bible never demands hatred of the person only their deeds and acts, we know that people who demand to be identified by their sexual conduct and genitalia are desperately missing these moral standards. They confuse deep convictions of others as the source of the ailing consciences and blame them. That confusion and incoherency is not our fault, it is not sourced from us, yet they rail and blame us for this. It is sourced from a God given thing, our consciences. They are a delicate instrument, not to be desecrated by immoral vandalism.
No moral compulsion can force another to accept what is repugnant. If homosexuality cannot sell itself, then it has failed. As soon as it legislates and imposes an acceptance, it hurls even deeper into a fantasy.
We are not to create a morbid and perverse identity based upon an appendage and its use. This is Biblically degrading and God has no desire to base a relationship with anyone upon those that descend into this perversion. He begs us to stop such behavior because it defiles what He has created us to be.
The freedom and liberty to exist in America is not based upon religious morality but upon civil and state interpretation of the sanctity and equality of life…not to automatically cover obscene choices assaulting the nerve, essence, and well being of the innocent and even the ignorant. They have a right to remain in a state of any purity they wish to define. To barge in and force those with moral convictions to imbibe perversion is an obscenity, an extreme hostility and vandalism.
America is here to protect you, but not any and all your chosen acts and/or repugnancies. Now if homosexuals really loved their fellow man, you would not be demanding he accept what his ancient convictions say are foul and abominable. You don’t game democracy to morph their beliefs into the trivial, backward and other mockeries, to accept what to most is unacceptable over night or by wearing down the innocent by coercion or tactics of flooding their environ with what they believe to be filth.
If straight folk do not wish to revise their ancient shame of a genitalia driven lifestyle & identity, they have that right to keep the shame that Biblical morality has created. It is a preservative for “righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people”.
Homosexuals have no rights to inundate the morays and customs of others like tantruming children. For them, it is purity of conscience and a sense of abiding wholesomeness not ever being coerced to give up and yield to the demanding of lower standards or even the annihilation of them.
I say they create their own military branch or community service corps, not try to foil and sabotage a yet resistant established American military.
The law is clear: Homosexuality is imcompatible with military service. The author is wrong in asserting there’s some sort of “secret law” that would allow this president to overrule the will of the people as expressed by their representatives in Congress.
If homosexuals can’t even make the minor “sacrifice” of soft-pedaling their sexual preferences, how can we seriously expect them to make major sacrifices for their fellow warfighters?
Most of the arguments in the preceding comments were also used about Blacks in the military, and to prevent mixed-race marriages. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now. And, DADT will change. Social change is always slow and that’s generally OK.
For the Bible quoters: Yes, Leviticus states homosexuality is an abomination. It uses the same word with shellfish. Also touching the skin of a pig is expressly forbidden. If one verse of the Bible is SO important, why are not the others in the same book equally important? Since football, pork chops and bratwurst seem to be part of our national heritage, and there’s a Red Lobster in every decent sized city in the US, then there is only one real answer: Some of you find homosexual sex to be icky and you can’t get over it. (Unless it’s two girls and then it’s super hot and you want to see it in all your porn.)
Regardless of the truth of the facts, flawed logic doesn’t help the discussion – if, in fact, the reason for a high level DADT discharges among women is related to “macho” males getting snuffed rather than a higher percentage of homosexual females,then unless there is also a higher number of homosexual females, we must aceept that the disproportion was caused by DADT discharges for heterosexual femals accused of homosexuality.