So congress pushes through repeal of DADT - I won't necessarily call this a mistake - more frustrating annoyance, since the issue is so marginal as to verge on meaningless - 32,000 Marines were discharged last year for various reasons, most having to do with 'weight' problems - of those discharges a mere 78 were from violations of DADT - of those 78 half were amongst new recruits most of whom were probably looking to get the hell out of the corps after the grind of basic - the overwhelming majority of the 40 or so remaining DADT discharges involved junior personnel possessing modest skill sets - in other words, contrary to impression the MSM would like to sell, the US military was not bleeding valuable talent because of DADT - the entrenched socialization norms of heterosexual male bonding within context of military service was it seems after all not posing a grave threat to the defense of the nation - turns out that the fact that some god fearing jarhead farm boy from Idaho maybe had a little trouble dealing with thought of Billy over there liking his conjugations irregular did not actually represent a gross ignorance undermining viability of the entire service.
But, of course, that's to be facetious and ignore that we're dealing with a larger civil rights issue - or not. The small numbers involved, much smaller than appear in a sampling of the general population, pretty clearly indicate what's really at play here is an agenda - this has nothing to do with an egregious abuse of civil rights or of the inherent ignorance of stereotypical hyper male-dominant heterosexual socialization sapping the military of the vital resource of highly skilled homos - whoops, that's offensive. This was all about a political agenda that has nothing to do with the abuse of rights nor the efficient management of the military - and that's why it annoys people not gullible enough to be swept up in the simplistic politics of it all - it's a marginal issue being inflated way beyond the significance of it's impact in order to appease an agenda that has nothing at all to do with the proper functioning of the military - a reality made evident by a prominent liberal blog that today asked: will the 14,000 gays released since the inception of DADT now be eligible for reinstatement? Not once do they seem to wonder: how many of that 14,000 actually wanted out of the military and used DADT as their excuse; why would the military want people back who broke codes of conduct? who have already demonstrated that they are willing to put a marginal agenda ahead of their obligations as a soldier? Point being, the liberal blogger is only interested in the politics of it, the agenda - the needs of the military itself are merely a side issue.
The silliness is that I don't much object to the repeal of DADT - I agree with Max Boot who writes in Commentary that a year from now it will be a non issue, the US military will simply carry on business as usual. Still, you open the door to this liberal sentimentality and you really can't be sure what nonsense crawls in with it.
