As it stands, the military’s policy has proven effective from both sides of the debate. Some will argue that and I don’t deny that there are isolated instances in which the policy has been abused, misused and zealously misinterpreted for the sake of a political agenda. Have we forgotten though that this policy was the result of a compromise from both sides of the aisle? And if you ask me, this is about as good as the solution gets on this matter without being completely lopsided in favor of one political agenda or another.

The far left can still be happy that gays aren’t barred from serving in the military; they just can’t admit their sexuality openly. And the far right can rest assured that ignorance may be bliss in not knowing that homosexuals are actually willing to fight and die for their country alongside heterosexuals. And the rest of us that are closer to the middle could really care less.

I want to make sure that I am clear on this: I AM NOT OPPOSED TO GAYS SERVING IN THE MILITARY. Whew, I said it. That wasn’t so hard. Now here comes the backlash from the hard right…Gays will degrade the mission capability of the Armed Forces by diminishing its morale. Don’t look at me, I didn’t say it. I do agree with it, though. And here’s my reasoning:

Sure a gay man or woman can and do just as good a job performing their duties in service of their country. There are a fairly significant portion of military members who are opposed to gays serving openly. And because of this morale will decline. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

Let’s clear up something else while we’re at it. There are some who would say that to allow gays to serve openly in the military would increase the military’s sexual assault/rape cases significantly. Let’s look at the facts: Sexual assault and rape is a problem in the military. It’s the ugly step-child of the environment in which our military operates and it’s a problem that you far too often don’t hear about because nobody wants to talk about. The victims don’t even want to talk about it and often don’t report cases for fear of judgment, embarrassment, ridicule or any number of reasons.Typically this issue is directed towards a man/woman sexual assault but there have been reported cases of same sex sexual assault and rape in the military.

Now, I highly doubt that sexual assault would rise significantly just by allowing gays to serve openly. I think we can well establish that gays already serve in the military and we should therefore not expect to see much if any increase in sexual assault cases. They’re already serving. What everybody should be concerned about more than a person’s sexual orientation is that fact that sexual assault/rape is such a prevalent problem in the military. You can’t introduce a potential problem or even look at something as trivial as openly serving when you compare it to something as significant as women (and to a lesser extent some men) being violated in such demeaning, perverted and sadistic acts. Let’s focus on the bigger issues already at hand before we try to fix something that’s not broken.

This article is part 1 of 2-part series.

Casey Robbins was born and raised in Idaho. He is a veteran of the U.S. Army and Iraq War, and currently resides in Atlanta, GA with his son.

Comments (3)