Hostile climates like this one make it difficult for more fair-minded officers, noncommissioned officers and soldiers to do the right thing. This climate also brings tremendous pressure to bear on young soldiers to prove their manhood by proving their homophobia, as syndicated columnist Deb Price points out in a recent column. Unfortunately, they're failing to teach that gay Americans are not the enemy. Instead, all too may are fostering a climate of hate and intolerance. Unfortunately, Price's analysis is right on target.
Cohesion is the glue that holds small units together.
It is built and sustained through constant and close association and it is based on total trust and confidence in one another. Legions of military experience have found that favoritism and double standards destroy this glue. Open homosexuals in forced intimate military units create the likelihood that sex will manifest itself in sexual competition. Sexual competition results in favoritism and double standards that defeat cohesion. In such an openly sexually competitive culture, the majority of heterosexuals find being stripped of privacy before homosexuals repugnant.