From: john@anasazi.com (John R. Moore)
Subject: Re: Showering in the Military (Re: Gays in the Military..what nobody is talking about: )
Reply-To: john@anasazi.com
Organization: Anasazi, Inc.  Phoenix, Arizona USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 00:45:39 GMT

Keywords: 

In article <1992Dec26.194444.2601@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> tip@lead.aichem.arizona.edu (Tom Perigrin) writes:
]In article <1992Dec25.175244.2266@anasazi.com> john@anasazi.com writes:
]>
]>And also another example of why the conditioning that the military would
]>require in order to accept gays would not work. THese sailors were
]>obviously conditioned against murder (life in Leavenworth Stockade breaking
]>breaks is not to be taken lightly), and yet they still committed. To me,
]>this simply highlights the aversion that some young men in the military
]>have to gays (no surprise to me), and how hard it would be to change
]>that aversion, and how poorly units would function in the interim.
]
]Your arguement boils down to "because these people would do an action even
]though it is wrong, we must pander to their desires".   Now, do you
]support one of Rush's big bugaboos, condom distribution in schools?
]The arguement is the same "they are going to do it, therefore we must
]support their actions".

But that is NOT the argument. 
The argument (actually, the part of it germain to your comment) is
that integrating gays into the military would adversely affect military
unit cohesion, and that coercion is not enough to fix that; furthermore,
that (unlike the case with blacks), it is NOT important to the united
states to integrate gays at that expense. Other arguments, such as
violation of privacy of hets also exist.
]
]I have no problem with condom giveaways because I don't object to premarital
]sex.  But you must adopt one of these positions to be self consistent:
]
]1)  accept the behavior of people, and set up society to allow them to 
]	do whatever they want (i.e., ban gays from military becuase
]	of anti gay feeling, AND SIMULTANEOUSLY distribute condoms to
]	help make premarital sex safer)
]2)  claim that you don't support either violence aginst gays or premarital sex
]	and try to modify the behavior of young people, both wrt to premarital
]	sex (abstainence) and gays (tolerance)
]3)  Admit you support violence against gays, but don't support premarital
]	sex (thus, keep them out of the military, and DON't distribute
]	condoms).

Nope, these are not the only choices. For example, I can claim that
it is possible to modify behavior, but that it cannot be done
well enough in the military case. Furthermore, I can claim that the
condom distribution is itself a behavior modifier in a direction which
is wrong. Finally, I can state that there is no strong reason to
allow admitted gays in the military anyway (there is no RIGHT to
participate in the military), and thus it doesn't justify facing
all of these problems, whereas we are stuck with the issue of adolescent
sexual behavior no matter what we do.


-- 
John Moore NJ7E, 7525 Clearwater Pkwy, Scottsdale, AZ 85253  (602-951-9326)
john@anasazi.com ncar!noao!asuvax!anasaz!john anasaz!john@asuvax.eas.asu.edu
"Government is the agent of those who are too refined to do their own mugging."
  Joseph Sobran
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