Sunday, December 19, 2010

DADT: Lots of Loose Ends

It seems that DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) may have made homosexuals and lesbians more comfortable, but heterosexuals, not so much.

Taking showers seems to be an issue.
A special Defense Department working group appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended that the military should “expressly prohibit” heterosexuals from using separate showers, bathrooms and bunking facilities from homosexuals when the repeal of the law banning homosexuals from the military goes into effect.
With everything our fighting men and woman have to deal with on a daily basis, the repeal of DADT, left some issues to be addressed

It seems that a survey was taken of 115,000 active duty service members.
The report also said a survey of more than 115,000 active duty service members indicated only 29.4 percent would “take no action” if they were assigned to share an “open bay shower” with a homosexual.

The other 70 percent of service members answered this way when asked what they would do if assigned to an “open bay shower” with someone they believed to be a homosexual: 25.8 percent said they would use the shower at a different time than the homosexual, 17.7 percent said they would talk to a superior to see if they had a different option, 11.1 percent said they would have a discussion with the other person to see how they would handle the situation, 7.9 percent said they did not know how they would handle the situation, 7.0 percent said they would do “something else,” and 1.3 percent said they would talk to a chaplain, mentor or leader about how to deal with it.
One would have thought that these issues would have been addressed to the satisfaction of the MAJORITY of service men and women BEFORE the repeal of DADT?

Read more on this story HERE.

8 comments:

phil said...

Very good post Rev.

70% of our service men and woman don't need issues such as this to worry about.

Repealing DADT was a bad move. Clearly, the majority of service men and woman were against it's repeal.

Right Wingnut said...

Another win for the far left.

Anonymous said...

Repealing this was a bad move. This only emboldens gays to put their sexuality in everyone's face.

What happens when some gay soldier gets a crush on someone he feels may be gay and tries to act upon it? Finding out in a not so nice way, they were wrong.

I can see the army hospital wards filling up already.

Anonymous said...

Repealing this law was totally unnecessary. 70% of the military must sacrifice being comfortable for the 5-10% who are gay.

zeke

Closer To Home said...

Maybe I'm just an old prude, but haven't we, while we made it easier to serve while gay, harder to serve while straight?

Imagine that, as a father, I had a daughter that wanted to enlist in a military had that completely co-ed bunking and shower facilities. Imagine that she has some sense of modesty and doesn't want to do show and tell every morning for 40 other heterosexual men. Haven't we eliminated the military as an option for her? (Not that there aren't young men who wouldn't have the same issues.)

It is easy to say that stateside peacetime accommodations can be arranged to avoid such situations, and indeed we have had to do that as we have "desegregated the military for gender. But what are you going to do in forward battle areas?

Now, tell me how posting openly gay soldiers is different from a privacy standpoint.

Bill589 said...

Do people actually want to walk around saying, “I’m a homo.” “I’m a homo.” I don’t hear about anybody walking around saying, “I’m a hetero.” “I’m a hetero.” I never felt that was important for me to proclaim. Who cares; just kill the bad guys.

Ann said...

I have a son in the military who feels they should have left this alone. Most of his friends there feel the same way.

When they are not in the field, they need to be able to return to a normal environment that isn't straddled with issues.

BOSMAN said...

I thought I read that servicemen were behind this? Where is that data. Seems to be in conflict with this.