The Senate Should Stop Asking or Telling

The lame-duck Senate may be congratulating itself on its high-minded repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy with respect to gays in the military. Somehow the liberal intelligentsia in the media, academia and Beltway elite believes this is a morally superior stance that elevates themselves in the eyes of each other. They’ve agreed that homosexual behavior is not a choice; they reject any and all Biblical teaching with respect to sin; and even though they haven’t the slightest idea of how to train an army and fight and win a war, they are needed to inject political correctness everywhere they can while they can.

Just a few thoughts:

First, the greatest front line fighting force in the world, the United States Marine Corps, opposed any change to existing policy. That ought to have settled the question. The frontlines of hot wars are not laboratories for politicians to engage in social engineering experiments. The questions regarding gays in the military just aren’t the pressing questions of our era.

Second, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ had the advantage of common sense. Most people don’t want or need to know the sexual habits of the people they work with. But as soon as someone makes an issue out of it in a job interview—for any employer—the situation gets weird. The recruit wants to talk about how many sexual conquests he or she has? Or how many times he or she has cheated on his or her spouse? Most employers would be a little uncomfortable with the stability, reliability and judgment of anyone who speaks like that; they would also be justified in wondering how wise it would be to introduce attitudes like that into the overall working environment. But now speaking openly about gay sexuality is ok, and presumably isn’t allowed to justify any of these other concerns. Sounds to us like the military recruiting interview has just become a new playground for lawyers and lawsuits.

Last, the American people are increasingly aware that the entire effort to legitimize homosexuality is really an effort to delegitimize Christianity and its moral teaching. That’s why the American people are fed up with Congress injecting its own religious teaching. The leftist elites are forever trying to demonize Christianity by misstating and distorting Christian moral teaching into the very opposite of what it is. Christianity does not teach the hate of individuals. Practicing Christians are among the most loving and tolerant and patient of all people with respect to all kinds of behavior; they are also respectful of privacy. Most are willing to live and let live with respect to the private sex lives of their fellow human beings. But that is never enough with the anti-Christian left. Full legitimization, redefining marriage and family, raising children, etc., is set as the only acceptable societal stance toward homosexuality. And if society won’t give it to them voluntarily, they will find a judge to impose it. And if they can’t impose it via the judge, they will keep pressing for the Senate and other bodies to legislate ‘correct’ morals.

But all of this is ultimately of a piece of the same godless intellectualism that is trying to make government into god in the healthcare arena. It won’t work; as Obama might say, it’s above the legislature’s pay grade. There is something about Christian moral teaching that connects with the human heart, and it doesn’t matter how many elites or ‘studies’ or Oprah shows are paraded in front of people to tell them the teaching is invalid or outdated or superseded, it just doesn’t sell. Reminds us a little of how the liberal intelligentsia went into overdrive during the Clinton years to tell us that everyone lies, that lies can be good for you, and above all, that a little adultery in a marriage is no big deal. These were, one and all, lies, and outside social circles where political correctness officiates, in the privacy of their own hearts, people know they are lies.

So the Senate may have earned the cheers of the left, but at best they have meddled in something they have no business meddling in. At worst, they have undermined the effectiveness of the US military, which is all that stands between Americans and the Islamic barbarians who seek America’s destruction. What a stunning and sick irony that weakening American resistance to Islamic jihad increases the chances that sharia law will someday govern in human affairs. Anybody ever heard of Islamic policy toward homosexuals being allowed to live—much less serve in the military?

Paul Gable

December 19, 2010