OxBlog

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

# Posted 11:20 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

GAY AND STRAIGHT TO BAGHDAD: Suddenly, the military has stopped discharging soldiers on grounds of homosexuality. While refusing to admit it, the military seems to know that gay soldiers fight just as hard and are just as patriotic.

UPDATE: Reader EG makes a good point:
The military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is wrong but it does not reflect the assumption that gay soldiers are less patriotic or fight less hard. It is premised on the assumption that the presence of gay soldiers undermines unit cohesion. The more telling point you could have made was that the military seems to tolerate the presence of gay soldiers when their units are under fire, i.e., when unit cohesion is most critical.
I mostly agree, but I still think that the unit cohesion argument is often a cover for unjustified suspicions that gay soldiers are less committed to American interests than their heterosexual counterparts are.
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