Officials: Half of force trained on gay ban repeal

I have found more information on this. Sodomy can only be used in certain cases, even under UCMJ. A couple of military charges of consensual sodomy have already been overturned due to Lawrence v. TX.

Sodomy laws in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for the U.S. Armed Forces, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces has ruled that the Lawrence v. Texas decision applies to Article 125, severely narrowing the previous ban on sodomy. In both United States v. Stirewalt and United States v. Marcum, the court ruled that the "conduct [consensual sodomy] falls within the liberty interest identified by the Supreme Court,"[15] but went on to say that despite the application of Lawrence to the military, Article 125 can still be upheld in cases where there are "factors unique to the military environment" that would place the conduct "outside any protected liberty interest recognized in Lawrence."[16] Examples of such factors include rape, fraternization, public sexual behavior, or any other factors that would adversely affect good order and discipline. Convictions for consensual sodomy have been overturned in military courts under Lawrence in both United States v. Meno[citation needed] and United States v. Bullock.[17]

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So, technically, UCMJ sodomy laws have not been allowed to apply except in those specific cases I mentioned in years, so there would really be "no change".

roguenuke said:

I have found more information on this. Sodomy can only be used in certain cases, even under UCMJ. A couple of military charges of consensual sodomy have already been overturned due to Lawrence v. TX.

Sodomy laws in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



So, technically, UCMJ sodomy laws have not been allowed to apply except in those specific cases I mentioned in years, so there would really be "no change".

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so it sounds like they will simply widen the scope to include gays. I know a guy who got kicked out under 125 back in 2006.

OscarB63 said:

so it sounds like they will simply widen the scope to include gays. I know a guy who got kicked out under 125 back in 2006.

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He probably wasn't kicked out under 125, but rather DADT if it was same sex sodomy. If he was engaging in same sex sodomy then he could still be charged with 125, since it would still be violating another military rule at the same time, until DADT is officially repealed.

They could not expand the scope to include gays after the repeal because that would be going against the entire point of the repeal. UCMJ rules still must be applied equally to all members of the force. What applies for those involved in opposite sex relations (i.e. consensual sex acts that do not violate other rules) has to apply for those involved with same sex relations.

I am going to have to correct myself here on new information I found out.

According to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, no consensual sodomy, including that between homosexuals, can be reasonably viewed as harmful to the military and/or national interests.

http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/marcum%20final%20%28filed%29.pdf

This person's conviction under Article 125 was overturned by the court because the sodomy was consensual.

So, that guy that you knew that was charged with Article 125 for consensual sodomy could have fought that specific charge (although if it were still same sex sodomy, he could have still been put out under DADT rule).

This is why the military needs to work a lot harder at putting out information on what is and isn't allowed and/or Congress needs to work at changing the wording of UCMJ rules faster to match what courts have ruled on. I did not know this information at all until the last month or so. It is important that servicemembers know that they do not have to accept punishment for things such as this without appeal, because someone hasn't gotten around to changing the language of a UCMJ law that one US court for the Armed Forces has already ruled part of the law as not being applicable in such circumstances.

And I hope that all servicemembers on this board will tell their fellow servicemembers not on this board about this particular ruling just in case someone else tries to charge someone with Article 125 for consensual sodomy. At the very least, this case should be brought to the attention of the chain of command and/or any accused personnel.

Navy Pride said:

I have yet to meet one person in the military that is happy with gays serving openly in the military...

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Not a requirement. Nobody has to be happy about it. Just follow the rules.

cpwill said:

not fully. bringing women in has always created problems - I would suspect the results of this would be similar.

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Bringing men in has always created problems too. Even heterosexual men. But these types cause problems that you can relate to, or are comfortable with, I guess.

tryreading said:

Not a requirement. Nobody has to be happy about it. Just follow the rules.

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Or, enlistment can go down the drain.

tryreading said:

Bringing men in has always created problems too. Even heterosexual men. But these types cause problems that you can relate to, or are comfortable with, I guess.

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if it was an all-female unit prior to, then yes. it's not a comfort issue - you lose all personal space at boot camp. :lol: come over to DP chat and ask them about that.

roguenuke said:

And what were most of those problems from.

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sexual tension.

Let's see. From my experience, the problems arose most from women serving because of women getting pregnant

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nope. fraternization, adultery, and breakdown in unit cohesion pretty much top that list. the dynamic of all-male-groups changes dramatically with the introduction of females; competition and clique-ing take off and brotherhood and cohesion are lost. Men lose focus, jealousy, whispering.... aie.

i've run into pregancy too, but it's not anywhere near the top of the problems created by females.

women being treated differently than men due to a cultural belief that women are weaker or should be treated differently

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no. women being treated differently because they do not have penises, but do have places that the penises would like to be (bluntly speaking). flirtation and generally over-personal relationships with seniors is another common issue.

You guys like to bring up sexual tension between men and women as causing issues

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probably because we are much more aware of it; given that A) the male sex drive is generally more insistent and constant and B) we are the ones who have the ability to see the difference between single-gender and mixed units. Everywhere females go in the military, they are generally part of a mixed-gender unit.

Are we talking about relationship issues?

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that's definitely part of it - though inter-relationship issues are also problematic.

You do realize that these can occur whether the people work together or not.

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I went for fully 5 months without seeing a live western woman. trust me, there was no hanky-panky, relationships, or problems stemming from the possibility of such on the FOB. again, this comes from you serving in mixed-gender environments, and working with that set of assumptions.

Plus, considering the low percentage of gays overall, it is unlikely that there will be enough gay men available in most units for them to start a relationship that could cause problems. And we have rules against having relationships that could cause problems

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:lol: yes. and 19-22 year olds who make up the majority of our military are well known for their ability to control their genitalia when rules are around!

we had 6 females in my shop at Division. 2 of them got busted for adultery. a third got pregnant during her divorce from another dude in the military also going through a divorce who was previously her supervisor. a fourth got busted for fraternization multiple times and the sixth was awesome to the point where I was willing to piss off every member of my own chain of command to make sure she got meritoriously promoted.... which she did..... a couple of days before she found out that her husband (also a Marine) was cheating on her with another female Marine.

in the meantime, the shop is divided. cliques, whispering, who's ****ing who, who's stabbing who in the back, did you hear what she said about me when they called her in that slut you know she..... good lord, women are horrible in groups.

cpwill said:

good lord, women are horrible in groups.

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As are men. I had no idea how bad guys were until I spent 7-8 years working nights in an office, and hanging with the guys in the shop on breaks. Holy Hannah. We got nothin on y'all.

cpwill said:

sexual tension.



nope. fraternization, adultery, and breakdown in unit cohesion pretty much top that list. the dynamic of all-male-groups changes dramatically with the introduction of females; competition and clique-ing take off and brotherhood and cohesion are lost. Men lose focus, jealousy, whispering.... aie.

i've run into pregancy too, but it's not anywhere near the top of the problems created by females.



no. women being treated differently because they do not have penises, but do have places that the penises would like to be (bluntly speaking). flirtation and generally over-personal relationships with seniors is another common issue.



probably because we are much more aware of it; given that A) the male sex drive is generally more insistent and constant and B) we are the ones who have the ability to see the difference between single-gender and mixed units. Everywhere females go in the military, they are generally part of a mixed-gender unit.



that's definitely part of it - though inter-relationship issues are also problematic.



I went for fully 5 months without seeing a live western woman. trust me, there was no hanky-panky, relationships, or problems stemming from the possibility of such on the FOB. again, this comes from you serving in mixed-gender environments, and working with that set of assumptions.



:lol: yes. and 19-22 year olds who make up the majority of our military are well known for their ability to control their genitalia when rules are around!

we had 6 females in my shop at Division. 2 of them got busted for adultery. a third got pregnant during her divorce from another dude in the military also going through a divorce who was previously her supervisor. a fourth got busted for fraternization multiple times and the sixth was awesome to the point where I was willing to piss off every member of my own chain of command to make sure she got meritoriously promoted.... which she did..... a couple of days before she found out that her husband (also a Marine) was cheating on her with another female Marine.

in the meantime, the shop is divided. cliques, whispering, who's ****ing who, who's stabbing who in the back, did you hear what she said about me when they called her in that slut you know she..... good lord, women are horrible in groups.

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And I seen the opposite while I was in division with men and women, whether I was one of a few women or the only woman or women made up half the workplace, the problems did not arise from the people sleeping together nearly as much as they did from the things that I mentioned put together, especially men treating women differently because they viewed us as "the weaker sex" or, as one of my chiefs put it to me, "the guys just aren't as reliable" (which is the reason that I ended up holding 4 collateral duties, while some of the guys at my level had none).

I have seen both work against women. Either the chain of command will give the women supervisory positions and/or collateral duties, and the guys will complain that the women are only getting those because they are women (which was sort of true once in my dept. but the girl was a SPU who got the job because she was a 1st coming to the boat and we were short on 1st classes, it turned out awful because she was horrible and psycho, but she had a Congressman father) or they will make us work harder to earn things than the guys have to work.

I know of an incident where a guy was talking bad about the women and another guy beat the crap out of him, but honestly, how the hell can you blame that on the women? Are you trying to tell me that those things would never happen without women in the military? I know that isn't true, since we had a guy whose wife divorced him and married his best friend from the ship. (She was never in the military.) Jealousy happens with or without women in the unit. Sexual tension becomes a problem when people let it become a problem. The vast majority of people on ships can go without sex through an entire deployment (not all, but most). Those that can't and get caught, deserve punishment.

Also, if you are saying that most of the problems are coming from cliques and jealousy, how the hell do you think that will happen with only a few gay guys, even if they beat the statistics, per unit? It wouldn't be the same in numbers, since if you assume that say 3 women are assigned to a division of 100 total. So statistically, out of a hundred people, 3-5 should be gay. Lets round high and say 5, but one of them is one of the women. So now you have 4 gay men, 1 gay woman, 2 straight women, and 93 straight guys. And you are telling me that the problems come from jealousy and sexual tension. But the problem with this is that you must be assuming that a) those gay guys are going to look at the straight ones for companionship (not likely, but possible) and b) everyone is single and/or they do not care enough about the relationships they are in. The numbers do not work to be the same for the sexual tension and especially not the jealousy that you believe you are seeing in your unit with the women. Because the gay guys are most likely going to only be messing with the other gay guys or looking to go outside the unit altogether (which is what most people do) and those 93 straight guys aren't going to be interested in those gay men at all. It is definitely possible that you would have some sexual tension and/or jealousy amongst the straight men and women, but it isn't likely that the same level of tension will exist between the two sexuality groups.

apdst said:

So, how were you in the service?

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Oh I'm doing just fine thanks for asking. So since you value a service members opinion let me give you mine, I'm a Platoon leader here in Korea with 57 Soldiers under my control. I recently personally briefed all of them on this possible repeal of DADT, and of course once I was done with my brief I asked for questions. Every question I got had to do with the benefits of gay Soldiers, that being because the military does not recognize any form of homosexual marriage. Meaning, spouses of gay service members receive none of the benefits that spouses of a heterosexual Soldier would receive, including medical benefits, housing, movement of household goods when PCSing to a new duty station, on post privileges, commissary privileges, death benefits should their spouse be killed, etc etc etc.

The questions were all about how the Army expects Soldiers to be content with this if a man or woman, simply because he's gay, can't be treated on the same level as heterosexual Soldiers. I've had a Soldier approach me to say he thinks he may be gay, he's pissed about this. Other Soldiers asked how the Army is going to screw over their buddies, how they would immediately go to IG (Inspector General) and file a complaint of discrimination. Yes Soldiers are angry, or at the very least think its stupid, but not about the repeal, they are angry that after the repeal gay service members aren't going to get the same benefits as everyone else.

I did have one guy ask me afterwards if in the future he was billeted with a gay Soldier, if he would be allowed to change rooms, because he didnt want to live with a gay man. I told him its up to the Commander, but Army policy leans heavily towards not moving Soldiers to different rooms because a gay Soldier is present, because they fear it'll encourage more of that behavior. Policy also outright prohibits moving a Soldier because he doesn't want to bunk with a black man for example, for the same reason to discourage that kind of behavior and thinking, I'm sure the policy towards gays will move towards that pretty soon.

It seems that, on this subject, many are losing a religion. That is, the religion of "military people are barbaric under-educated bigots".

I didn't realize before how good the repeal of DADT would be for the military (I knew it would be good for people and for units, but I did not see a broad far-reaching impact for the military itself). It has (well, the transition, actually) proven to all the scumbags out there that military people are just like anyone else. They are not bloodthirsty psychopaths bent on murder, and they are not a steemy pot of bigotry.


I would note that the military is far less racist than the rest of society, I would not be shocked if it also became far less homophobic.

ecofarm said:

It seems that, on this subject, many are losing a religion. That is, the religion of "military people are barbaric under-educated bigots".

I didn't realize before how good the repeal of DADT would be for the military (I knew it would be good for people and for units, but I did not see a broad far-reaching impact for the military itself). It has (well, the transition, actually) proven to all the scumbags out there that military people are just like anyone else. They are not bloodthirsty psychopaths bent on murder, and they are not a steemy pot of bigotry.


I would note that the military is far less racist than the rest of society, I would not be shocked if it also became far less homophobic.

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I know. Us liberals proven right again.

Independents were proven right! Stop stealing my credit!

ecofarm said:

Independents were proven right! Stop stealing my credit!

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But I have been saying all along that our military is professional and can handle what needs to be handled. It's those damn antis who are like "OMG, those soldiers are all going to quit so they don't get gay cooties, and the ones who stay are going to be afraid to bend over, and the others are going to commit assaults on every gay they see".

People who have been against DADT repeal have had the stupidest arguments.

I had one argument, up until a few years ago: "soldier gets what soldier wants"; however, a few years ago polls became clear that most military people didn't give a crap about gender.

My unit didn't care about gender. We had a few who displayed all the stereotypes, and no one ever bothered them because they were good soldiers and we could all count on them staying awake on guard and taking it for us if need be. I thought that perhaps that was because we were an elite unit and therefor cohesion was greater. Hell, we so much didn't care that the only time in my life that I've been to a gay bar (ok, actually, there was one other time) was in the military. A guy in my platoon and I were friends with a a group of people (townies), one of whom was openly gay. He told us that his bar was clean, quiet and served cheap beer - and we could go there for a few before the party started back on the block. We knew it was a gay bar, but we didn't care. We went. It was a bit weird that it seems we were a disturbance because military members who were there saw us and got worried. Anyway, it wasn't quiet and clean. It was loud, noisey and had a queen contest. Oh well, was fun anyway for an hour or so and then we went to the party.

I'm too straight. Thinking about gay stuff pretty much turns my stomach - you guys do what you want but don't ask me to think about it. If it is not too much of an offence to gays, I'm sorry to say, I think it is gross. When I hang out with gay people, I ignore that they do gross things in bed - same as when I hang out with straight people. Anyway, as a paratroop, went to a gay bar near Ft. Bragg.



As it turns out, the other units don't care either. I'm so relieved and proud.

tryreading said:

Not a requirement. Nobody has to be happy about it. Just follow the rules.

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Exactly. That's all that is required. And adults can handle these things.

apdst said:

And just think, a few years ago, most Lefties saw them as a bunch of brainwashed murderers.

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That statement is crap and you should be ashamed of yourself for saying it. Most on the left that I know have a great deal of respect for the military which is why they were against a useless war. Shame on you for making such an ignorant, biased, hatefull statement!

Layla_Z said:

That statement is crap and you should be ashamed of yourself for saying it. Most on the left that I know have a great deal of respect for the military which is why they were against a useless war. Shame on you for making such an ignorant, biased, hatefull statement!

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As one who served, I have to say that you are quite correct.

Navy Pride said:

Isn't it ironic that 2 of the biggest hypocrites and liars like Edwards and Weiner are making the headlines these days...........What scumbags of the democratic party....

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You really don't want to play that game. While I'll agree that they are both pretty rotten, especially Edwards, that type of bad behavior is not exclusive to the democratic party.

disneydude said:

Well....for one....he put the focus back on where it should have been in the first place and actually accomplished what GWB only talked tough about.

See, I would rather have a President that gets results than one who talks tough. Some people like the "tough talk" because they can be lulled into a false sense of security where they can wave their flags and pretend that we have a "strong leader".

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Actually, GWB stopped "talking tough" about bin Laden. Remember, wasn't the quote something like he didn't really think about him anymore?

Layla_Z said:

You really don't want to play that game. While I'll agree that they are both pretty rotten, especially Edwards, that type of bad behavior is not exclusive to the democratic party.

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In fact, as far as cheating on a wife with cancer, Newt did it long before Edwards. However, I think we can all agree that those who do these things are scumbags regardless of party.

tryreading said:

Not a requirement. Nobody has to be happy about it. Just follow the rules.

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Its pbvious by your comment that you have never seerved in the military or you would know about troops morale ans command readiness.........Happy troops aew much betteer in combat........They don't need the gay thing disturbing them.......