Who cares about fair? This isn't preschool, it's the infantry.
Who said they couldn't transfer them? Do you think a Marine Captain is too stupid to figure things out on his own? Discharging someone takes time and money and decreases our numerical superiority; obviously, if he can just send the gay dude to another unit that's what he'll do. Like I said, I'm confident that our military commanders can figure things out without you and me and some stupid-ass politician micromanaging them.
I highly doubt it. I had a hard enough time as a straight dude in the infantry; can't imagine what it would be like if I were gay...
I said: Unit discretion. That means the same standard is applied to all units.
These are all ideological and philosophical concerns. Fair...equal...honor. Those are just words. I'm more concerned with the actual results; the lives and the objectives at stake.
I'd say around 95% of them would have actively ridiculed him.
They would probably be more resentful of him. My senior Marines hated me when I first showed up to the fleet (well, they always hated me) because I was kind of cocky and very smart. They didn't like it, and they made my life harder because of it. If I had told them I was gay...:rofl
Good lord, I can't even imagine...
Yup.
Homophobia is irrational. Stop trying to make sense of it and just accept the fact that lots of grunts don't like gay guys. I don't understand why this is so surprising. There's plenty of regular Americans who are uncomfortable with gays, why should you expect an ultra-conservative niche of blood-thirsty devil dogs to be different?
Certain rules have never been decided by commanders, but by those pencil pushers and politicians above them. Should the commanders have the same free reign to discharge anyone that they found didn't fit in, and not just be forced to make him fit or transfer him?
I meant it would cut out the fears that there would be a huge number of deaths or beatings of gays that were found out. Going back I see how that could have been misunderstood. Most guys are not going to risk their career to beat or kill a guy for being gay. Make his life tougher, sure. But not kill him. There might be one or two cases of beatings or deaths, but those sometimes happen now under DADT.
And as I've mentioned before it's not much different than those guys who have issues with interracial dating. The biggest difference is there are so few of those left nowdays to do much major damage. I did meet two Marines in HI though that had really big issues with interracial dating. Now if they would have tried anything in this day and age against another Marine who was dating a girl of a different race, they'd probably fail and get in major trouble for it.
So maybe we should look and see if this caused any problems for the military in the past when a lot fewer people were tolerant of interracial dating? It could give a perspective on how to deal with problems arising from allowing gays to serve openly.
I wasn't talking about a new transfer into the unit. I'm talking about someone that they all had accepted into the unit, who had gone out on deployment with them, who had spent off-time with them, who showed them that he could do the same job they do, and who has been with them a while and they consider a friend. Would they feel the same way if they considered the guy a friend, one of them? I don't think you could absolutely say they would. I think most guys would truly care less, even those in infantry.
Also, I think you'd be surprised at how not "ultraconservative" these guys really are. I hung out with a lot of Marines in Hawaii, before and especially after I met my husband. They all had different beliefs and political leanings on many things. I had a Marine come out of the closet to a fellow Marine on my balcony. The reaction wasn't anger, it was more of disbelief over how many Marines he knew that were gay.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, most of the problems that people imagine it will cause I'm pretty sure won't be nearly as bad as people think, even those who have been in the most susceptible units. We'll never know the truth until it happens.