Well, folks, we have a war to fight, countries to
build, our own borders to protect, and it has even
been suggested that perhaps we might even consider
investing some military power into actually defending
this country from terrorism. That means we’re
gonna need a lot of people.
So many, in fact, that reservists have been called
in, the Army just used a loophole to call in 5,674
former troops, and talk of instituting a draft is
starting to get a little too serious. Some have even
called for a “fair draft,” which would
involuntarily enlist girls as well as boys, and close
loopholes which have too long allowed the wealthy
(we’re not mentioning any names) to avoid the
draft.
Thank Allah that there’s still one section
of the American public safe from the increasingly
aggressive recruitment strategies of the U.S. military:
Gays. Currently, the military is short 790 truck drivers.
I know; You’re expecting a rest stop toilet
joke, but for once, I’m going to take the high
ground. Between 1998 and 2003, 113 of these drivers
were sent home-sweet-homo. The Army needs another
211 food service operators.
In that same time frame, 153 military homosexuals
with exactly the same specialty skills were walked
out of the closet and straight out the back door.
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The Army needs 300 medical personnel to accommodate
the escalating casualties in Iraq. Between 1998 and
2003, 212 general medical care workers, as well as
dozens of specialists, have been told to pack their
mess kits and hit the showers just one last time.
The Army is so — pardon the term — hard-up
for linguists that they’ve begun hiring civilians
to translate in Iraq. You can probably guess where
I’m heading; At least 15 language interrogators
have had the most dishonorable of discharges since
1998. The bright side of it, I suppose, is that we
know that servicemen and women always have an “out,”
should things get too sticky.
When Clinton introduced “Don’t ask, don’t
tell,” abandoning the military’s “you
just walk those suspiciously high boots on outta here”
policy, we all assumed that gays would still be allowed
to serve the country that obviously offers them such
opportunity, as long as they didn’t “flaunt
it” by talking about it at work. Of course,
this policy is almost as unjust as the prior, and
even more insulting (“Sure, you can fight and
die for your country! But, um, just don’t ever
acknowledge what and who you really are. That’s
bad for morale.”) Well, it turns out that that
isn’t quite the case. The military can and will
remove any known homosexuals, no matter how they find
out about it.
Since “don’t ask, don’t tell”
came down, an estimated total of about 10,000 men
and women have been dismissed from military service
because it was brought to someone’s attention
that they were gay. The way in which the military
discovers one’s homosexuality is irrelevant—you
don’t have to “tell.” They are also
varied: She owned one too many Sarah McLachlan albums,
his bunk kept moving closer and closer to his, Her
“sister” just put another Georgia O’Keefe
in their living room on the base, His boyfriend realized
the trip to Hawaii had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor
and e-mailed the Sarge’ his Internet personal
ad…
They might all sound absurd, but at least one of
them is true: About 1/5 of the gays and lesbians that
have been given the combat boot were exposed by online
profiles. What their superiors were doing browsing
gay personal ads is beyond me, but the top sites seem
to be match.com and gay.com. Yes, gay.com. Apparently,
homosexuality is no longer a commercial endeavor exclusively
for street hustlers.
Apparently, it isn’t enough to be closeted
at work. The military expects gays and lesbians to
make their first priority concealing their sexual
identity. If they have any free time afterward, they
can also defend the great liberty this country offers
them to be who they were born to be. It’s all
so gallingly hypocritical — not to mention insulting
to people who only wish to serve their country.
Frankly, I’ve never understood why anyone but
gays would want to be in the military. The possibility
of no one of the opposite sex around for weeks, maybe
months at a time. Close quarters with many young,
fit persons of the same sex. The costumes. The working
out. The marching. The group showering. The discipline.
It’s all so… gay. And, to be honest, of
the people that I know personally who have served
in the military, at least half of them are gay. Openly,
that is.
This policy is unfair to straight servicemen and
women, too. They are undeniably at a higher risk of
death or injury because their colleagues, and their
often essential skills, have been sent home for having
the wrong sexual orientation. And, there’s a
serious flaw in this if-we-see-it-online-it-must-be-true
system: Anyone can place an online personal ad for
anyone else, as long as they have their picture and
some identifying information. You could make one for
someone you know to be gay, or someone you know to
be straight, just as long as you want them out of
the military. Tired of a snoring bunkmate? Match.com
has the answer for you! Then again, straight servicemen
could even make one for themselves, if they wanted
out badly enough.
It’s a tragedy, of course, that people are
dying because of this policy. But, I think that I’ve
found a way that we can use the sheer idiocy of their
data collection to our advantage. Shhh… A little
bird has told me that the commander-in-chief has a
few stretch turtlenecks in his closet, too.
I hope that Crawford has some great house clubs, because
once the Pentagon gets a load of this, I guess Dubya
has to pack up his flight suit (the codpiece alone
should have given it away) and head back home. It’s
unlikely that America will ever have another President
as reckless and war-happy as Bush.
But let’s let them figure it out. It’s
best not to interrupt the Personals division of the
MP while they’re collecting “evidence."
Shhh… Don’t tell. Unless they ask.
