Gay barracks? Military faces thorny questions

Never happen,Mainly because it would be a return to segregation one palce we do not want to go is BACKWARDS in America....

Originally posted by CanadianDream420
The whole Middle-East, Russia AND China are afraid of the U.S Military...
I don't think a few homosexuals will be making any sudden gestures.

Lol whatever!

Originally posted by slank
reply to post by boondock-saint

 

What did i say but there is a lot of mental midgetry focused around the military.

I hope they are US military & not God's military, because i am not paying taxes or supporting a tyrant, religious or otherwise.

Why can people not think clearly in a disciplined, intellectually honest manner?
Maybe that is impossible & it is time to quit kidding myself.

So many wackos on this board!!!

There is many more practical questions to be asked.

What about showers?

What about them falling in love? would that effect unit cohesiveness?

Will a captain have to worry about his squad getting killed because a gay guy is trying to save his 'lover' or just a guy he has a crush on?

There is a reason why mens and womens barracks and showers are seperated.

Also...will gay guys be alowed on submarines?

MANY more practical questions.

Anyway....it seems to me the only people who will suffer for this are gay people.

Contrary to popular belief Dont ask dont tell was also added to PROTECT gay people. Once it is gone.....you can expect MUCH discrimination.

And whats gonna happen then? you will have a bunch of lawmakers doing 'anti-discrimination' laws for gays in the military....and thats just gonna piss ALOT of people off.

I dont see how this cannot effect the armed forces in any way but negative. Its not like a bunch of gays are gonna sign up now.

Your not gonna have a bunch of enlistment....in fact enlistment may go down because of this. I have talked to over 50 people already online because of this and they haved stated that they would not sign up if it is repealed.

They are just your average 19 year old males.....they pretty much reflect the norm of america.

Just remember people...if bad things happen because it is repealed...its your fault.

reply to post by airspoon


My ex was stationed at FT Drum, I worked in the dental clinic there as well!! He had a fellow soldier that was gay; it was no big deal. I think he got a little teasing, but he was part of the team. He lived in the barracks and as far as I knew nobody had a problem with it, again he was part of the team. I think that as long as you are able and doing your job, age, gender, sexual orientation should not matter.

I believe it was mentioned earlier, but my next question is how they would be able to give the soldiers' significant other the same rights as a spouse. Won't that be the next issue? How would that work? Could they live in military housing, get benefits etc?

reply to post by Wolf321

Then why don't they? Arabic and farsi are very hard languages for an adult english speaker to learn. Gays tend to have more ability at that sort of thing. Or do you think that just accidentally most all the guys they picked for language training were gay?

If it is not acceptable for coed barracks and coed showers then why should it be okay for open gay people sharing the same with straight soldier?

Equality is the norm and I thing most straight male soldiers would jump at the chance of having coed showers.

Same idea so don't yell at me for asking the question...

Originally posted by AltraVision
reply to post by airspoon

 

My ex was stationed at FT Drum, I worked in the dental clinic there as well!! He had a fellow soldier that was gay; it was no big deal. I think he got a little teasing, but he was part of the team. He lived in the barracks and as far as I knew nobody had a problem with it, again he was part of the team. I think that as long as you are able and doing your job, age, gender, sexual orientation should not matter.

I believe it was mentioned earlier, but my next question is how they would be able to give the soldiers' significant other the same rights as a spouse. Won't that be the next issue? How would that work? Could they live in military housing, get benefits etc?

I would say that you don't give the significant other benefits unless they are married. As of now, they can't get married in New York so I don't see it being an issue. Once homosexual rights are equal, then you give the benefits to their spouses just as you would to heterosexuals. I really don't see that being an issue because it could be realized the same as with heterosexuals.

--airspoon

I have never been in no army, but being not interested in females in society is bad enough, i would never ever go into the military to get worse haressment over it.

Originally posted by tothetenthpower

Those who don't understand or don't want to, can simply ignore the issue as again, I don't think you will see a "gayer" military because of this.

~Keeper

So no mauve camouflage? No baton units for parades? No sylish decor in the barracks?

I have run out of stereotypes.

Don't ask don't tell is the only way. As long as gays don't parade their orientation around, there might be some unit cohesion. Otherwise things might start looking a little suspcious:

Originally posted by 1SawSomeThings

Don't ask don't tell is the only way. As long as gays don't parade their orientation around, there might be some unit cohesion. Otherwise things might start looking a little suspcious:

They already are starting to look a little suspicious:

reply to post by warisover


YIKES! I hope the Taliban doesn't get ahold of that vid.

Or Iran, or ...

Originally posted by IceHappy
If it is not acceptable for coed barracks and coed showers then why should it be okay for open gay people sharing the same with straight soldier?

Equality is the norm and I thing most straight male soldiers would jump at the chance of having coed showers.

Same idea so don't yell at me for asking the question...

My sentiments exactly. Why should homosexuals be allowed to get a sneak peak or a quick feel and yet we straight men can't get a coed shower with the leadies? Didn't they do that in the roman days?

[edit on 1-6-2010 by dragnet53]

Originally posted by airspoon
reply to post by RedCairo

 

First, we were no allowed to single a female out for discipline due to fear of sexual harassment. We were also not allowed to focus on a female if she was lacking the ability to complete any given task. We were also not allowed to focus on a female in uniform for any reason. This caused a lot of the females to lack the discipline necessary to fight effectively. This puts the whole military unit in jeopardy because the unit is only as strong as the weakest link. Females were basically allowed to get away with just about anything and not have to do anything but show up. Men are basically being made to carry the burden of their female counterparts, due to no fault of the men or women in uniform, rather that of the civilian policy makers.

That has the same result as someone having the bad luck to be born beautiful. It is horribly destructive when one does not have the same limits and requirements demanded of them by the people around them. I cannot think of anything worse for women's competence, and survival, and that of everyone around them, than "making it easy on them" like you mention.

Then you get into the behaviors necessary to be around women in uniform. It takes several days of intense instruction on what you can't say or do around females in uniform with most being an over exaggeration. Such things as never using the word "girl" even when not speaking of the female in question, no talking about your wife or daughters not even when talking to another male, not talking about your plans for after work, no jokes of any kind, no exclusion of any female in conversation - what little conversation you can now have, no using your hands in gestures because it can be mistaken for a "pass" and absolutely no touching, not even to assist. There are so many things that male soldiers can not do or say around women and so many things that soldiers have to do differently around women, that it becomes the greatest obstacle in the modern military. Soldiers literally have to walk on egg-shells around a female in uniform and any slip up could be a huge deal. This not only takes important training time but it also hurts the moral of both the women and men while causing them to focus on things other than the job at hand. It creates much undue anxiety.

For godssakes. And I thought my job (corporation) had a ridiculous amount of politics. That's bad enough in general, for certain, but how anybody can maintain all this (and not have other side effects like passive/aggressive born of the psychological issues stemming from the social situation) in a combat situation?

Much of my life has been in mgmt of various sorts. Generally I have biased toward hiring men. Is that fair to women who need work? Not even close. Is that biased? Absolutely. Is that reasonable and what is best for the company? In some cases, yes. Every woman I worked around was always the one who had to be home with every sick kid. She was the one who had to go home on time or even early for daycare, for making dinner, for every kid's school events. The list is surprisingly long. Oh yeah and she was the one who would all the sudden have to be given three entire months off and hired back if she felt like it because she was pregnant.

Now in my perfect world, men and women would share these things equally one way or another (this would, of course, require a larger % of children had active fathers...) and so the business world would have no reason to suffer bias because it wouldn't matter. But since society is not that way, neither is business. If you run shipping/receiving warehouses with tight deadlines as one example, hard work and regular no-notice required overtime, if you have small teams that suffer horribly when one person is late/leaves early let alone is gone all day, it's just stupid to hire someone who has an incredibly high% likelihood of being unable to meet the demands, and everyone else ends up carrying them and the whole group suffers as a result. On the other hand, if I hired guys fresh out of the grunt navy or something, they worked hard, didn't bitch about it, worked overtime as needed, and almost never had to be gone repeatedly for various sick kids and school affairs and pregnancy leave. The only thing that has confused me about issues like these is why they are not blindingly obvious to even the dimmest person, and why our whole society seems to walk around pretending a lot of things are/aren't so that are the opposite just because it makes them all feel better.

because they feel as if that female superior didn't earn it. This is not good for anyone's military.

A bit like being black in college, I suppose. The biased weighting of test scores (and often severe bias in-favor-of minorities in college and against particularly white men) often causes a prejudice against even credentialed people because it's assumed that big unk bought it for them, rather than them deserving it. That is so unfair to the people who genuinely DID deserve it. And it doesn't help any situation when a situation creates a disrespect.

(continued) RC

reply to post by RedCairo


(continued)

The thing about your military unit when your heading into a deployment is that you trust the guy on either side of you. You know that this guy has got the same training as you and his abilities are the same as well. With women, they do not receive the same training and their ability does not have to be the same as yours. This creates unnecessary anxiety and makes one lose his confidence with the people on either side of him.

Now of course, there are many women who are just as capable, if not more so than many men but they are not required to live up to that ability so it is a big unknown.

Yeah, I think it's literally a life and death situation, which is huge.

The thing is, this stuff is more specific to our country IMO. I am no expert on any military but I am willing to bet that the Israeli women soldiers are pretty tough, for example. It's not an issue of what women can do (as you point out), it's an issue of the pathetic (imo 'liberal') expectations (or lack thereof). Which in the name of nobody getting their feelings hurt, coddles people whose development is stunted as a result (much of our public schooling system is a walking case study of that).

There is a weird thing I've noticed about myself over the years. I'm not sure if this is just that I'm warped, or if it's hardwired biologically, but I have seen it in so many other women that I suspect it might be. When times are tough and I have to do something myself, I get out and do it. Even if it's hard as hell. But my perserverance, intensity of trying, and willingness to give up are often affected by whether a man (particularly a Manly Man(tm) LOL) is anywhere near. Despite that I'm a problem solver and not a wimp, despite that if I had to do it I would, I find a nearly "instinctive" tendency to let a man at least help, if not do it, if that's an option. Now, I know, probably some woman is going to kick my ass for saying that, I'm not saying that I do this intentionally or regularly. I'm just saying that over the course of a life I've observed this about both myself and others. Anyway so the point I'm getting to is that, I think if you put a team of women into a unit (just them), they would get tough and compete with each other, but if you put them into a unit with men, especially more men than women, it may be a somewhat different result.

This isn't really something new about human nature in other respects. For example you see it with kids, if any adult or older person is near. I think most people can see it even with oneself as you reach adulthood. No matter proactive one is, there is always that chance to fall back, to call the parent, to have some kind of prop if things go south. Not until I was standing in Hartford about to freeze to death for lack of 75 cents or alternatively get knifed for trying to walk home when I wasn't Puerto Rican enough, and I realized that the next hour would decide whether I lived or died and nothing and nobody could help me -- a bit like long term backpacking trips in the mountains when you walk alone and you get stuck and struggle and finally bawl about it and then get up and get on your way LOL -- there are just certain challenges that require that *nobody be there to bail you out* in order for character development of certain kinds to happen. I think the problem with the mixed genders is that on some biological level, the female body perceives the male body as stronger, and "defers" to that "authority" you might say. Not all women obviously! -- but I think this is a genuine phenomenon. As long as socially we all pretend that nothing is hardwired biologically in humans, like animals, no insight based on that can happen.

Again, this is not the fault of the females in uniform but it is the way it is, due to the civilian leadership and the problem of women getting angry and yelling sexual harassment to get even. The military just took the grey area out of the equation so that this can't happen and they are less likely to be sued. What happens when gay men start to do the same thing? Are we then going to cast the same eggshells before the feet of men serving with homosexuals? I would hope not but it is a more than real possibility.

Personally, I'm all for both women and gays in the military but something has to be done, not only about the different standards but also the different protocols that come attached with them. Our current protocols surrounding women in the military have definitely created a less effective fighting force and many people, both men and women would agree. If we do the same thing for gay men in the military, if we go about it the same way, we are going to be in big trouble.

Yeah, I can see that being a potential problem issue.

IMO, "don't ask, don't tell" is basically a political way of avoiding leadership and saying, "talk to your mother about it."

RC

Originally posted by tothetenthpower

Originally posted by Jessicamsa

Originally posted by tothetenthpower

No need for this Gay Barracks, or Gay Units. Those who have a problem can simply leave the military.

They can simply leave the military huh??

LOL

I wonder how well that would play out.

It would probably do the military some good. Remove all those redneck jarheads with happy trigger fingers.

You know the ones that throw puppies off of cliffs and mock kids they are there to protect?

~Keeper

How do you know that the soldiers who are guilty of throwing the puppy off the cliff or mocking the kids weren't gay? Does being gay mean you are always a good person?