In the year 1867, the Marquess of Queensberry published some rules concerning the sport of boxing. I am told that the fellow who has the title of marquess ranks below a duke and above an earl in the British peerage. The rules contained the essentials of good sportsmanship. There was to be no hitting when the referee separated the two fighters, there were to be no rabbit punches to the foe from the back, and if a man were to be knocked down, he was given ten seconds to regain his footing and to clear his head. These rules of sportsmanship have been followed ever since they were introduced in 1867. But as we now find out, the Republican Party does not play by those rules.
In the year 2000, there were two main Republican contestants for the presidency. One was George W. Bush and the other was John McCain. McCain was doing quite well until the contest reached the southern state of South Carolina. At that point, the forces of George W. Bush quietly accused McCain of having fathered a black child. In point of fact, the McCains had adopted a child from Bangladesh who had a dark complexion. A second charge brought by the Bush forces was that McCain was unstable due to his long imprisonment in the North Vietnamese jail called the Hanoi Hilton. This argument is much more difficult to deal with because McCain, over the years has shown erratic behavior and, for all I know, there may be something to the charge of long imprisonment affecting one’s mental stability.
In the year of 2008, McCain was the Republican nominee for President. There came a time when McCain offered to suspend his campaign and demanded a conference in Washington to discuss the financial situation including the banks, Wall Street and the declining value of the stock market. When the conference was held, McCain did not make a case for his own campaign but rather sat largely silent, while the proceedings took place around him.
Now in 2010, we find that McCain has stripped his gears about gay servicemen. Ever since the 2008 campaign, McCain has let it be known that he favored repeal of the law called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But when that issue came up for a vote this past weekend of December 18, it developed that McCain turned out to be a violent proponent of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Here’s another case of McCain’s erratic behavior. But fortunately other Senators had better heads on their shoulders and voted by 65 to 33 to abandon the don’t ask/don’t tell policy.
While McCain embraced the continuation of the don’t ask/don’t tell policy, he was also forced to accept the doctrine of unit cohesion. As an old soldier, I assure you that the talk about unit cohesion is a large component of the product of a bull’s bowels. But there was McCain with some of his Republican comrades, asking our soldiers who are gay to not disclose that fact because it would interfere with unit cohesion.
On a personal note, I am, as many of my readers are, a veteran of World War II. That war was probably the most significant one that the United States has ever been engaged in. As to the claim of damage to unit cohesion if a gay solder were involved, it would come as great news to me. I served more than a hitch in the Army of the United States. And I also assume that I served with gay soldiers as well as straight soldiers. I could not tell the difference.
One had to be very careful in stating that last fact. Soldiers who were in the Army on December 7, 1941, were entitled to be called members of the United States Army. Those of us who were enlisted and drafted after that date were called members of the Army of the United States. I hope that this distinction is as clear to you as it has never been to me.
As an enlisted man, I slept in barracks and often in tents. From time to time, we had a base that offered showers. When showers were available, it was not that often. I undressed my frame and presented my nude body to the showers at the same time with other men undergoing the shower ritual.
Perhaps this should not be disclosed but in the interests of honesty, I am here to tell you that in all of the sleeping and the showers, I did not encounter one single proposition from another soldier. I assume that, given the law of averages, there were gay men in the ranks that I served with. But if that is the case, I did not have sex appeal enough to cause them to proposition me.
But over this past weekend, the don’t ask/don’t tell policy was abandoned. During the time that it has been in place, which amounts to 17 years, more than 14,000 service men and women have been dismissed as a result of their disclosing their sexual preferences. I assume that some of them were given dishonorable discharges. How cruel. Now the Secretary of Defense says that he will start the process of lifting the ban on our troops. He suggests that it may take as much as a year to be fully accomplished. Again, speaking as an old soldier, I can’t imagine how anyone could take a year to simply lift the ban on gay troops. But the Secretary of Defense has to live with the John McCains of this world and in time, decency will prevail. But the fight is not over.
I gather that some politicians are asking for separate showers and sleeping arrangements for the gay soldiers. In time, we will probably look back on this 17-year period in our history and say, “How shameful!” The thought suddenly occurs to me that I should assure the readers of these essays that I am not a gay person. Also I am not a lesbian person. I advocate doing away with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law as a matter of common decency. In battle, there is no such thing as unit cohesion. Every soldier or sailor does what he can do as a matter of self preservation. The enemies of the United States do not ask whether they are being shot at by a gay or a straight soldier. The shot from a gay soldier is just as penetrating as a shot from a straight soldier.
And so I rejoice with those who respect decency in our armed forces. When soldiers and sailors of the United States military are no longer burdened by the stupidity of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and by the burden of unit cohesion, they will be a superior force.
I suspect that the Marquess of Queensberry would now approve of the Congressional gift of this past weekend. He would be pleased to know that “don’t ask/don’t tell” and the unit cohesion business are on their way into oblivion. This is a triumph that all men of good will should applaud. The Marquess can now Rest In Peace.
E. E. CARR
December 19, 2010
Essay 518
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Kevin’s commentary: This is a pretty cut-and-dry “wrong-side-of-history” scenario that these DADT proponents found themselves in, and continue to occupy today primarily through protesting gay marriage. The worst is to see it coming from other marginalized groups, like blacks, who were fighting for equal marriage rights and other civil rights for themselves so recently. The only hope here is that eventually all the bigots will have died off or their children will stop believing their bullshit and society can continue to advance.