To my friend who said that history would judge us poorly, I would submit if you would look thoroughly at history -- and I'm not saying it's cause and effect -- but when militaries throughout history of the greatest nations in the world have adopted the policy that "fine for homosexuality to be overt" -- you can keep it private and control your hormones fine, if you can't, that's fine too -- they're toward the end of their existence as a great nation.
If you’re not saying that it is cause and effect, then, why say it? Of course, that is what he was insinuating. I hate to break it to him, but gays are already in the military. We haven’t been made any weaker because of it, and we won’t be any weaker, if they came out of the closet to their fellow soldiers.
Now, he has a point that some restrictions on their freedoms are put on soldiers that civilians don’t have to deal with on an everyday basis, but there would be no harm done by letting this policy go away. Restrictions should obviously be put on these relationships, just like they do with male/female relationships, but not so much that they have to hide what they are.
Many worry that, if gays came out, then, soldiers would be less likely to watch their backs or vice versa, when they are in the heat of battle. I will admit that there would be a few that might be uneasy, at first, but they would learn to deal with it. There may be a few idiots that might react in a homophobic way, but they should be dealt with, just as anyone would be that made a racist comment to a fellow soldier.
Many worried about the same thing, when Dwight Eisenhower integrated the races in the military. Nothing major came of it, and I believe that there was much more to fear, at the time, from integrating the races than letting the gays that are already in the military come out. Believe me, when they are getting shot at, the last thing that they are thinking about is what orientation their buddies are.
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