Seen here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/27/pace.gays.ap/index.html?eref=ib_topstories
Joint Chiefs chairman again says gay sex immoralWASHINGTON (AP) — Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, caused a stir at a Senate hearing this week when he repeated his view that gay sex is immoral and should not be condoned by the military.Pace, who retires next week, said he was seeking to clarify similar remarks he made in spring, which he said were misreported.”Are there wonderful Americans who happen to be homosexual serving in the military? Yes,” he told the Senate Appropriations Committee during a hearing Wednesday focused on the Pentagon’s 2008 war spending request.”We need to be very precise then, about what I said wearing my stars and being very conscious of it,” he added. “And that is, very simply, that we should respect those who want to serve the nation but not through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God’s law.”Anti-war protesters sitting behind Pace jeered the four-star general’s remarks with some shouting, “Bigot!” That led Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Byrd, D- West Virginia., to adjourn the hearing abruptly and seal off the doors.The hearing resumed about five minutes later in which Pace said he would be supportive of efforts to revisit the Pentagon’s policy so long as it didn’t violate his belief that sex should be restricted to a married heterosexual couple.”I would be very willing and able and supportive” to changes to the policy “to continue to allow the homosexual community to contribute to the nation without condoning what I believe to be activity — whether it to be heterosexual or homosexual — that in my (emphasis mine) upbringing is not right,” Pace said.Pace’s lengthy answer on gays was prodded by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who said he found Pace’s previous remarks as “very hurtful” and “very demoralizing” to homosexuals serving in the military.In March, the Chicago Tribune reported that Pace said in a wide-ranging interview: “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.”Harkin said he wanted to give Pace a chance to amend his remarks in light of his retirement.”It’s a matter of leadership, and we have to be careful what we say,” Harkin said.Pace noted that the U.S. Military Code of Justice prohibits homosexual activity as well as adultery. Harkin said, “Well, then, maybe we should change that.”
Funny how that works. I see it as immoral to place your religious beliefs over the law of the land. I see it as immoral to try to rewrite the constitution to better serve his religion. I see it as immoral for a general to even comment on the private, off-hours activities of other people (so long as they don’t affect performance).
Phreedm,
Erratas…
I know you like to nit-pick so I am correcting myself before you pounce. My posting above needs quite a bit of editing. I repeat “and” so many times it makes me dizzy. I am generally not that careless (I hope). Also, Anita Woolfolk’s textbook is a textbook which is very different from reading the original source. I chose the textbook version because the graph explaining the levels of moral reasoning is very well done. Dude, with you it’s always something…
Wow,
I am a recent new member to this blog, but my wife has been a member for quite some time.
I find it interesting to note that this entire thread is revolving around, and being controlled by, Im4gvn. He controls and shapes the entire board’s discussion…one man!
This is analogous to how the national political conversation has gone for the last 30+ years: Jerry Falwell, or Jim Dobson, or Pat Robertson, or Bill Donahue, or Fox Noise shouts the loudest over the silent sheep ‘Middle Majority’ who just want to have a rewarding job, a clean environment, safety, freedom, and a good future for their kids. A very vocal, and well-funded minority has seized the national converstion and browbeat politicians to kowtow to the idol of the Religious Republican Right, which ironically, is actually neither of the three aforementioned words.
The basic matra has been: Republicans are saviors, Dems are demons; lack of school prayer and tolerance of gays are the fundamental causes of all the World’s woes; Xians are being fed to the lions daily!; Keep government small and local, except when it comes to funding a national moral thought police and funding the American military to spread our empire to gain and control resources for us across the globe; Anything anyone in a military or Police or ATF, etc ‘uniform’ does is absolutely unquestionable, under penalty of prison; Anything that regulates businesses is verboten; anything that businesses do (unsafe products, pollution, discrimination, etc) is absoultely unquestionable (What’s good for GM is good for the World, etc); anyone who speaks on behalf of the other creatures and life forms on the Earth and on being good stewards of the land, water, and air are enemies of the state…communists, liberals, pinko fags.
The US has truly become a much different, and lesser, country than it seemed to be when I was younger.
Hitchens is right.
Ren,
Hey comrade, I think your post to BarbieBrains from right on, as far as it goes.
(original post inbetween the solid lines for reference:)
__________________________
Barbiebrains,
And Alexatheist is dead on right about the military culture…redneck thugs
Watch it now! We’re not all that way. While I will gladly accept the label of Redneck (I don’t act like one, just a birthright) I am anything BUT a thug.
I don’t hunt, because I don’t like to kill anything. I don’t like NASCAR because it is a silly waste. I don’t drink beer, smoke cig’s nor chew ‘bacca. I’m even mistaken for a nice person on occasion
Tonight I am going on a, “light the Night Walk’, to raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma, and on Sunday, I am going on a Motorcycle “Toy Run” to collect presents for a local children’s home.
I guess what I am trying to say, is that stereotypes are usually wrong, and almost always bad. That is all.
______________________________________
But…
I served for twenty years in one of the services…and here is my perception about the military:
The military’s members, especially the officer corps, due to the all-volunteer system, are largely Republican and more and more, fundamentalist Xian.
Again, like I said in my post about society at large, I think this perception is magnified by the phenomonen of having a small number of extremely militatnt right-wing, fundamentalist Xian voices control the conversation. The bad thing about the military is, that since the most rabid Xians control most of the Commander positions, from the very top down through the many lower command positions, anyone who speaks against the Fox Noise/Jim Dobson/Republican party line risks their careers being stopped in their tracks, and bring harassment and shunning upon them and their families from the rest of the true believers and from the many cowed ‘Vichy French’ types. Commanders cannot overtly say outloud and write down that ‘Maj so-and-so is not to be promoted because he is an Xian, but they don’t need to do that…they can kill your career covertly…do you have any idea how next-to-impossible it is to prove religious discrimination if the Commander has half a brain and doesn’t leave a paper trail? It gets better: military officers are forbidden to say ANYTHING remotely negative about any superior officers, or ANY sitting government officials…Presidents, cabinet members, govenors, Congressmen, etc. This is a UCMJ-punishable offense. Of course it is pursued far more vigorously against members who dare to say anything critical about Republicans, and much less so against those who openly rail about ‘Demoncrats’ ‘Osama-Obama’, ‘Billory’, etc. Also, amongst the Offcier Corps, I have personally witnessed many conservational jewels such as these:
“Those stupid, poor (Black was unsaid) people from New Orleans need to get educations, get jobs, invest in 401-Ks, and buy proper insurance and stop sucking off the teet of government handouts. They should follow our example! (much laughter from the 50 or so people arounf the Officer’s Club table)”
“I think that the US government should grow drugs, and lace them with poison, and sell them to the druggies. Then they would die and our drug problem would be over”
“I think that the military should make the entire US-Mexican border a bombing/artillery range, then we could have a place to practice and we would kill enough illegal immigrants to keep anyone else from daring to try to cross our border. Our hands would be clean because we would post signs in English and Spanish along the border saying “keep Out, Deadly Bombing Range”
“I think Homosexuals should be placed in mental hospitals…deported…killed…”
” I think the people who leaked about our recent screw-up should be
1) jailed or 2) tried for sedition and executed…”
No, these comments do not represent everyone in the Military, maybe not even the majority…but they represent a large and sigficant protected subset of your military. Disturbingly, many of the seemingly clean-cut, well-spoken ‘model citizens’ actually despise the parts of the Constitution that they don’t like but swore to protect (free speech, but only for the correct spech…they want to get rid of the Establishment Clause and the Section 6 clause forbidding a religious test for government office positions, etc.)
Further, many of these people despise a goodly fraction of their fellow citizens and would wish them to be deported, jailed, imtimidated, or marginalized. And lastly, many of our Officers beleive that they are some kind of elite warrior caste better than, and separate from, the rest of the hedonistic, slacker society, and renounce the concept that they work for the people, and not the other way around. Many times the blanket of security classification is NOT used to keep legitiment capabilities and weaknesses of ours from our enemies, but to hide incompetence, deriliction of duty, and illegal acts.
How does this come to pass? Because atheists, democrats, environmentalists, other-than-pure-heterosexulas, and the like, either leave the military voluntarily or keep their heads down and grit their teth until they can retire to collect their well-deserved chaeck-a-month and lifetime healthcare. Naturally, unless one either converts, or lies out the @$$ to please the boss-men, one will never be promoted into ‘the circle of trust’ and become a Commander, so there is little chance of this viscious circle being broken. Of course, many people with the above ‘incorrect’ liberal philosophies simply don’t elect to join the military in the first place.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is the sad truth as I have seen it for the last twenty years. Yes, I am one of the cowards who kept my head dwn to get my pieces of silver…I tried hard to moderate the views of some of the extremists when I could, but you just can’t cross swords with the boss-men and get too vocal or you get canned, perhaps sent to Ft.Leavenworth prison if you tell too many truths!
Reason help us all!
OK, One more:
Everyone, if you have the means, send money to the ACLU and Mikey Weinstein.
We all need to return to actually following the US Constituion.
Phreedm
Sorry one more…
I really think that we should not be hogging the blog with all the back-and-forth postings and sniping. Let’s be polite and positive. If you wish for me to answer or debate anything from now on, I would be more than happy to respond but through another channel. You can email me at…
comradehelga@yahoo.com
This is the considerate thing to do. Until then,
Thanks again.
BC1,
Welcome to the party.
YES!!!! The officer corps is decidedly more fundamentalist than are the enlisted ranks.
I had never met another Atheist before I joined the military. I can honestly say I (knew) more Atheists in the Army than Mormons.
Once, when I was a young SPC, and a driver for the Division G-3 (Plans and Ops) I took two MAJ’s (my bosses) up to the Allied Ready Reaction Corps (ARRC) in Monchengladbach, DE. While there, we met up with a friend of theirs from West Point, for lunch. During that lunch, their friend started in on bashing libruls, tree-huggers, fags, etc…
Seeing as how he was on O-4 and I was an E-4, I kept my mouth shut. But, when he started in on how everyone should have 10 or more ‘arrows’ in their quiver, and how we would never run out of natural resources because God would provide for us, I couldn’t stay quiet any longer.
I didn’t get in any trouble for what or how I said what I said, so I must of maintained my military bearing, but I let him know in no unspecific terms, how I felt about what he was saying.
On a side note, the two MAJ’s I was with, actually APOLOGIZED TO ME! I don’t know if it was because they agreed with what I said, or just that they had respect for me as an individual, regardless of rank, but they both said they didn’t know ‘he was like that’.
I was always open about my Atheism. Early on, because I hadn’t planned on making it a career. Later, it was because the cat was already out of the bag, and I’m no shrinking violet. I didn’t look for reasons to cause problems. I just stood my ground. Whenever there was a mandatory religious event, I would move to the back of the formation and simply remain quiet and respectful, even if I felt sick to my stomach by the superstition.
I was one of the few who chose to stay in the barracks on Sundays (during Basic Training) and clean rather than go to Chappel. Don’t tell anybody, but the washers and dryers were wide open on Sunday mornings and cleaning IS cleaning
Barbiebrains,
Love that e-mail addy, comrade.
Please elaborate, I’m curious what these events could be (even though an explanation will probably make my blood boil).
cry4turtles,
Sorry for not being clearer. In the Army, we are incessantly having formations. A minimum of 4 a day is normal for a combat unit. (I cannot speak for REMF Units.) Formations are generally mandatory for all. When you are at a mandatory formation, and a Chaplain gets up front and directs everyone in prayer, IMO, that is a mandatory religious event.
Things like this would occur especially frequently whenever the unit would be doing something dangerous. Going to the field, gunnery, real world deployments, etc… They were also common at change of commands, retirement ceremonies, parades, and anywhere you could expect an invocation as part of the pomp and ceremony. I didn’t mean to make it sound like mass(ive) baptisms for all.
P.S. REMF = Rear Echelon Muther F*&%ers
BC1, great posts. Welcome!
Before I upset anyone, I had better clarify my use of the term REMF. I didn’t come up with it, it is common banter amongst combat troops.
My wife is a REMF. The fact of the matter is, for every trigger puller, there are four or five people that drive trucks, handle fuel, prepare food, maintain equipment, push paper, etc…
In an effort to put more soldiers behind weapons and get them out of support roles, the DoD has been awarding contracts to civilian companies to do those things that soldiers have previously always done themselves. That is the reason companies like Kellog Brown and Root exist.
No disrespect intended.
This is a little late, but I don’t think that the “gay” gene could be presented in a simple thing like a punnet square.
I was just trying to show Imforgiven that a trait can remain even if the organisms with that trait as a phenotype don’t reproduce.
its recessive, not regressive
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