The recent posterboy...

[aelburr]

...for ending the "Don't ask, don't tell" thing in the military.  I came here because I didn't have to confine myself to text-sized posts.  For me it is a complex issue.  I think I can claim to be 'on record' as having no problems with people in same-sex relationships and partnerships... for years Charmaine and I wished for an alternative to '

Comments

[cakmpls]

I'm very sorry that you were a victim of sexual assault (yet another among my friends and acquaintances).

However, "gay" does not equal "pedophile" (or "hebephile"--sexually attracted to pubescent teens). Most men who sexually abuse male children and young teens identify themselves as straight, not gay. Many of them are married to and/or maintain sexual relationships with women. In fact, a young soldier who fears sexual assault in the shower is probably statistically safer with out gay comrades than with those who identify themselves as straight (when what they actually are is warped).

[aelburr]

Please try to understand it's simpler to address bothe comments at once.

[arturis]

There are countless stories of service people who did not out themselves, but wound up screwed by DADT for one reason or another

[aelburr]

Just to be clear, I look back with twenty plus years of life-experience on the events I described and I know what the differences are between what I said and how it's always taken

[cakmpls]

I know very well that you're not That Guy.

Everything that I've seen indicates that the majority of people in the military know that they serve alongside gays and lesbians and don't care. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it.

and a culture doesn't just change if you pass a law, ask anyone in the equal rights movements

With all due respect, you're wrong. I'm old enough to remember--and I'm pretty sure you are not--what U.S. society was like before the civil rights movement. I remember what U.S. society was like before Roe v. Wade. I remember what it was like before the "women's liberation" movement. I can assure you that a culture most certainly does change when the law forces it out of its comfort zone.

[arturis]

Suffice it to say that your argument boils down to DADT as a security blanket for those too afraid of reality to face it, and a childish argument like that simply doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny. If I sound hostile it's because I think you're wrong to advocate what you did in your original post and I firmly believe in direct and unapologetic confrontation of bad ideas. You simply don't provide a justification sufficient for depriving thousands of men and women of their rights and their livelihoods. I don't assume you're a homophobe, or that you confuse homosexuals with pedophiles, but your argument does so I think it warrants a response.