Actually, the worst a commander can get is to commit a kind of extortion.
not really. every member of the military has the ability to go around their chain of command via the request mast procedure.
If this were true, the number of persons forcibly put out would have gone down with DADT. The opposite has been true.
only because you're ignoring the effect of a heightened deployment schedule, two wars, and an increase in social acceptance (even award of a much-sought-after "victim" status) to those separated for that reason. telling your chain that you're gay has become a free ticket out of fulfilling your contractual obligations.
HAH. yeah. you'd have to open up investigations of probably 90% of the infantry.
Again, it has succeeded, the disturbance to military personnel issues would have been reduced by the policy, but the opposite happened.
really? i have yet to see any major difficulties rising in the ranks from this policy. we suffer far more by allowing mix-gender units than we do from make DADT. what tension it does produce is probably the minimal option, though there might indeed be less if the ban was total and enforced. but that isn't a political possibility.
Well, that's an old ruse used, usually without success, by an endless line of Maxwell Klingers.
:shrug: it happens. and it happens successfully; again, chains of command fighting two wars don't really have the time or resources to devote to proving one way or the other. if you go outside and get (say) division psyche to issue you paper on it, there's not really much they can or are willing to spend the effort to do.
There have been over 11K forcible removes of people from service since the policy was instituted.
if you count every administrative separation as a forcible remove.
which is sort of like counting suicides as murders.
Any suggestion that someone is gay can be used to trigger an investigation.
no. it. can't. either de facto or de jure.
Frankly, I can't imagine how any legal sexual conduct someone engages in before they serve or out uniform and five miles from base has any bearing on their service.
generally it doesn't. it's the sexual conduct (and tension that derives from its' possibility) on-base and on-deployment that is the issue. which is why generally nobody cares what happens on leave; so long as you break no laws.
Could someone explain that to me? You can say the policy isn't meant to hurt someone who is quite circumspect about their private lives, but it does.
generally no, it doesn't. consider, estimates vary, but a pretty conservative figure is that 1-3% of the general populace is homosexual. now, there are about 1,455,000 people in active duty, and another 848,000 in the various reserve components. so out of a total populace of 2,303,000; we're looking at somewhere between 23,000 and 69,000 homosexual members serving
right now. the military also has an extremely high turnover; most of its' members are young (average age around 22), and serve one tour. DADT has been in place for what? almost 15 years? during that time period, we can probably assume (wow we're getting rough guesstimate) that close to 100,000 homsexuals have served at one point or another; and you are trumpeting around the 11,000 number, as though a 89% success rate was a failure?
Usually the person answering the poll is left to define the term for themselves, but to me harrasment means something aimed at a particular individual who is aware that the speech or conduct is going on. That's different from pointing and saying "psst....look at the queer!" from some distance.
:shrug: well that's you. without some kind of clarification from the respondents, it's sort of useless.
And yet there doesn't have to be. People are remarkably good at keeping their sexual appetites in check.
HAH, yeah, if there is one thing that the 18-26 year old demographic cohort is known for, it's the ability to keep it in their pants and not be effected by sexual tension.
It's unwarranted fears of people that gay's can't do so (and you've seen that false premise wafted on the internet) that stokes this problem.
actually it's the existence of the sex drive that stokes this problem
And here is the crux of the issue. Your judgment falls to protect the person who is limited by their own prejudices. That's what people (like the Col. whom NP quoted in another thread) mean when they warn that the US military is stocked with young "traditional" men. What you are then saying is that protecting the sensibilities of those young men is more important than having a truly meritocratic, volunteer system.
have you even been paying attention to what i've been arguing? defending
anyones' sensibilities isn't up there.
That's a bad choice for any employer.
actually it can be a good choice; but that's a matter for a completely different debate.
This reasoning is circular. It should be against the law because it IS against the law?
it is against the UCMJ and adherence to that law is not a "bad attitude", as you claimed.
I thought the policy against pregnancy came from the fact that pregnancy impairs a woman's ability to perform her duties.
yes. which wouldn't be a problem if women weren't getting pregnant. but women are getting pregnant; given that sexual relationships are banned how is this happening?
oh, because banning of the basic sexual drive cannot and does not end it's enactment; at best it only lessens it.
