Why gays – and straights – shouldn’t serve in the military
Here's a pretty old legacy post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 23 years ago, in 2001, on the World Wide Web.
David Horowitz takes issue with his friend Andrew Sullivan and tells us why gays shouldn’t serve [Salon.com]. The answer: because they’ll fuck all over the place and this will undermine unit cohesion. He deftly silences any attempts to point out the homophobic nature of this argument by spending the opening passage fulminating about how political correctness
silences arguments through charges of homophobia, racism, etc. This, of course, is poppycock; by far the most politically correct thing to be these days is politically incorrect
, and anyone, no matter how hateful and idiotic, can take up the mantle of the martyr for freethought if he (or she) wants to be immunized against criticism, or hugged on stage by Elton John.
One thing I will give Horowitz: he’s a blithering buffoon but he has an accurate vision of the military. I can’t help but think Right on! as he says Of all social institutions, the military is the most pragmatic. Its task, brutal in its simplicity, is to develop the most efficient killing machine that money can buy and intelligence can devise.
and To create the perfect killing machine, the military works hard to drain recruits of their individuality and their self-interested desires in order to make them think like cogs in a machine. An essential part of the military mind is that the members of fighting units don’t think for themselves but do as they are told.
But then, of course, I realize that David thinks this is a good thing. Ultimately, I actually agree with Horowitz that this is an excellent argument to show why gays shouldn’t serve in the military. But that’s only because I think it’s an excellent argument to show why no one should serve in the military, for the sake of their own humanity.
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Robert 
I disagree with what is said above; you make it sound like gay people are all sex-crazed maniacs! How do you know this? How do you know if gay people will “fuck all over the place” as you so diplomatically put it? I’m sure that some of the heterosexual soldiers, if given the chance would also “fuck all over the place.” There are sex-crazed homosexuals, but you cannot deny that there are sex-crazed heterosexuals as well. How do you know who is and who isn’t. You can’t seriously believe that ALL gay people are addicted to sex. And who are you to decide who should be in the army? Are you in the army? If not, I don’t think that you should have a say in the matter.
I am not sure why Mel took the time to respond to my post, since he apparently did not read it. I know for a fact that not all gay men are addicted to sex; since I am myself bisexual, and a man, and I am not addicted to sex. What I stated very clearly is that David Horowitz’s argument is insanely homophobic, and his fulminations about “political correctness” are nothing more than crude bullying in an attempt to silence serious criticism of his arguments.
(I have, by the way, written extensively about what I think about the cause of LGBTQ liberation; you can find quite a bit about the topic under the archives for the “LGBTQ/Queer Liberation” topic, to which this article is linked.)
I don’t think gay men should be in the army; but that has nothing to do with the fact they are gay. It’s because I don’t think ANYONE should be in the army, whether they are men or women or trans or genderqueer, gay or straight or bisexual or asexual. I state this very clearly in the second paragraph of my post. (I know two paragraphs is a lot to read, but still…).
Finally, Mel asks whether I’m in the army. The answer is that I am not, and I never have been, and I very much hope that I never will be. (My family has not been so lucky. My grandfather was a victim of the draft in World War II and Korea; my father was a victim of the draft in Vietnam. Some family traditions were made to be broken.) Mel then goes on to claim that if I am as fortunate as I indeed am, that I should have no say in the matter of who should or shouldn’t be in the military. This position is, I think, not only absurd but pernicious. The foundational principle of the military in any FREE society is civilian control; a self-selecting, self-ruling, standing army is the mark of every brutal empire and tyranny known to human history.
Imagine that you say that no-one ought to join the Mafia; and someone else demanded that you can’t have anything to say about /la cosa nostra/ unless you’ve been a part of it yourself. Would you take this person seriously and shut up? Why?
First, I think your all out of your freakin’ minds. Have you forgotten that if it wasn’t for the army (and all military) you wouldn’t even have the right to post these messages. Our military secures your rights as an American citizen.
Next, David Horowitz’s vision of the military couldn’t be more inaccurate. The army’s fighting units do not just “do what they are told”. They are taught to use thier heads to carry out a mission. The individual soldier has to make his own decisions. Like weather or not to squeeze the trigger. “The most efficient killing machine money can buy”, is what is commonly reffered to as the Army Rangers, Special Forces, and Delta Force. These make up only a small part of our army. Going back to “doing what they are told”, if a soldier is given an unlawful order he doesn’t (or shouldn’t) obey it.
Lastly, you are probably wondering if I am in the army. Yes, I am. I am glad to be fighting for your freedom (even if you don’t appreciate it).