Discrimination against homosexuals in the military
Name(s):
Restrictions against male homosexuality in the armed forces
Active prejudice towards homosexual combatants
Prejudicial treatment of homosexual soldiers
Incidence
The USA has dismissed more than 17,000 homosexuals from the armed forces in the decade since 1982. Senior military commanders acknowledge that tens of thousands of homosexual men and women serve in the 1.8 million-member military, but keep their sexual orientation a secret.
In Britain, homosexuality remains a bar to serving in the military.
Claim
1. Is there an assumption that homosexual men will be as sexually predatory toward straight men as many straight men have been towards women ? And if anal and oral sex are the criteria, then the majority of practitioners are heterosexual.
2. Military training is not an easy life, and there are expectations of sacrifice -- including sharing close living quarters with a lot of people who will not be of your race, religious or political persuasion, or geographic background or sexual practices. Once you get beyond the differences existing between members of the same outfit, once your train together and work together, you discover similarities and mutual common ground for trust and respect without having to change, compromise, or threaten anyone's personal principles. Lack of privacy actually accelerates the process.
3. One traditional reason for keeping homosexuals out of the military has been discarded in the USA when a study done for the Pentagon found that homosexuals were no more of a security risk (being susceptible to threat of blackmail), than other soldiers.
Counter-claim
1. Some people are unsuited to some jobs, either because of the work itself or because of conditions that come with it -- which does not make them bad, unworthy, or unreliable people. In particular homosexuals should not be in occupations that require group sharing of sleeping / bathing / dressing accommodations.
2. What the military understands is that AIDS is a blood-borne disease. In peacetime that is hardly a problem. But in a war, which is the only legitimate business of the military, blood is shed. Others come into contact with it, and the probability of that blood carrying the AIDS virus then becomes a cause for concern.
3. The concern is not so much that homosexuals are in the armed forces, but that if the ban was lifted they would openly display their homosexuality, possibly undermining the morale and discipline of fighting units.
Aggravated by
Strategy(ies)
Type
(F) Fuzzy exceptional problems