From: phil@netcom.com (Phil Ronzone)
Subject: Re: Are they not men?
Organization: Generally in favor of, but mostly random.
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 22:13:02 GMT

In article <105169@bu.edu> kane@buast7.bu.edu (Hot Young Star) writes:
    >I once heard from a former navy man that he estimated that
    >about 25% of sailors were either homosexual or bisexual. No
    >joke.
    >
    >Anyhow, aren't you in disagreement with Phil Ronzone? That
    >the army, since it is supported financially by taxpayers,
    >should be open to every capable and responsible adult?

Hmm, well, you totally misunderstand my position. Almost deliberately
I think. After the postings of today about male homosexuals being turned
on by the sight of bare chest (on men), perhaps even you at last can
understand what this is about.

Privacy (a derivative of FOA).

We do not expect the women in the  armed forces to sleep or shower with
men. They have separate facilities. Even though there "be laws", and even
though many men will not automatically lunge at a naked female corporal
in the showers, most (all?) women would not like having their privacy
intruded upon -- they wish, as most of us do, to reserve and control
the time and manners in which they are in a sexual context.

As I do.

None of us wish to have our sexual context intruded upon.

And unless homosexual men come from Mars, and are totally different from
other men, then it is uncomfortable to worse to have homosexual men
intruding sexual contexts at times when none is wished for.

To wit:

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Gays in the Military? A Cautionary Tale  WSJ, December (8?) 1992

By KEVIN M. MCCRANE

Bill Clinton's desire to lift the ban on homosexuals in the 
military brings to mind a troubling incident from my own military 
experience more than a generation ago.

When I turned 18 late in 1945 I discovered that I had missed the 
war but not the draft. After five weeks of boot camp, I was 
shipped to San Francisco's Treasure Island, the Navy base where 
new recruits waited to receive their orders.

It was dark and raw as only San Francisco can be in January when 
flve of us mustered on a pier to await a ship's boat from the USS 
Warrick. The new recruits were told the Warrick was an Attack 
Cargo Auxiliary, which sounded promising. We soon discovered this 
was a fancy name for a cargo carrier. Even so, we were excited at 
the prospect of shipping out. Lugging our bags, we arrived on 
board late at night. We unhooked our berths from their vertical 
positions and settled down to sleep.

The awakening was sudden, panic- filled. A hand was caressing my 
leg, running up the inside of my thigh. A dim figure ducked away 
as I lashed out, kick- ing, swinging a fist and striking air. 
There was no more sleep that night.

Our voyage began the next day, our destination Honolulu. But the 
excitement was gone, at least for me. At the end of a long day 
riding the sea's rolling swells, I took a 12-inch box-end wrench 
from the engine room and retreated to my berth. Hanging on to the 
wrench under my pillow, I slept.

My sense of unease did not go away even when the seasickness 
passed. On the fourth day at sea I visited the ship's post office. 
The second-class petty officer man- ning the tiny cubicle greeted 
me warmly. Grinning broadly, he stepped back from the counter, 
dropped his dungarees, fondled himself and made an obscene 
invitation. I walked away.

Whom do you tell? I chose a third-class petty officer on my watch. 
He laughed at what I told him. "You're on a French cruiser, kid." 
He told me to watch out.

It was in the open now, a subject for discussion among the new 
recruits. Each of us had been accosted, patted, propositioned. 
Though we were in different divisions, we flocked together for 
meals, averting our eyes when one of "them" leered in our 
direction.

There were five such aggressive homosexuals that we knew of on 
board this ship with almost 250 men. They were all petty officers. 
Their actions were enough to poison the atmosphere on the Warrick. 
Meals, showers, attendance at the movies, decisions about where 
you went on the ship alone - all became part of a worried 
calculation of risk.

After two weeks at sea, I received the whispered news that the 
smallest and most vulnerable of our "team" had been sodomized in 
the paint locker. When I looked at the bearer of this news, I saw 
that there were tears in his eyes. "Why are they doing this to 
us?" he asked.

It was a good question. The comments of some petty officers 
suggested that the rapid discharge of so many veterans at the end 
of the war had brought with it a slackening of discipline. On 
board the Warrick this disciplinary neglect had loosened the 
restraints on homosexual behaviorthe threat of discharge was the 
surest of these - and created an atmosphere where exhibitionism 
and lewd action were commonplace.

All homosexuals aren't rapists. But in this closed male society, 
with its enforced communal living, unchecked homosexual appetites 
wrought havoc. The atmosphere on the USS Warrick in January of 
1946 does have a present-day parallel - the atmosphere of fear 
that rules in today's prisons.

Is there a lesson here for Mr. Clinton? I think so. The U.S. Navy 
certainly won't turn into a collection of horror ships like the 
Warrick if he succeeds in ending the ban on homosexuals in the 
military. But my experience does suggest that military officials 
are right to worry that "good order and discipline of the services 
will be impaired" if the ban is lifted.

A postscript: When the Warrick reached Pearl Harbor in that long-
ago WinteF, a new executive officer reported aboard. On the sixth 
day in port the PA system blared a summons "for all those 
personnel being transferred to assemble at the quarterdeck."
 I joined the rush topside to see who was going ashore. The ship's 
rail was lined with crewmen cheering as five petty officers 
debarked into a P-boat.

I went below decks and ran back up. When the P-boat cleared the 
side, I dropped my box-end wrench into the blue waters of Pearl 
Harbor.

Mr. McCrane is a retired businessman
liuing in New Jersey.  
-- 
I believe Gennifer Flowers.

These opinions are MINE, and you can't have 'em! (But I'll rent 'em cheap ...)