Washington Post
March 14, 2007
Bigotry That Hurts Our Military
By Alan K. Simpson
[The writer was a Republican senator from Wyoming from 1979 to 1997.]
As
a lifelong Republican who served in the Army in Germany, I believe it
is critical that we review -- and overturn -- the ban on gay service in
the military. I voted for "don't ask, don't tell." But much has changed
since 1993.
My thinking shifted when I read that the military
was firing translators because they are gay. According to the
Government Accountability Office, more than 300 language experts have
been fired under "don't ask, don't tell," including more than 50 who
are fluent in Arabic. This when even Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice recently acknowledged the nation's "foreign language deficit" and
how much our government needs Farsi and Arabic speakers. Is there a
"straight" way to translate Arabic? Is there a "gay" Farsi? My God,
we'd better start talking sense before it is too late. We need every
able-bodied, smart patriot to help us win this war.
In today's
perilous global security situation, the real question is whether
allowing homosexuals to serve openly would enhance or degrade our
readiness. The best way to answer this is to reconsider the original
points of opposition to open service.
First, America's views on
homosexuals serving openly in the military have changed dramatically.
The percentage of Americans in favor has grown from 57 percent in 1993
to a whopping 91 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed in a Gallup
poll in 2003.
Military attitudes have also shifted. Fully
three-quarters of 500 vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan said in
a December Zogby poll that they were comfortable interacting with gay
people. Also last year, a Zogby poll showed that a majority of service
members who knew a gay member in their unit said the person's presence
had no negative impact on the unit or personal morale. Senior leaders
such as retired Gen. John Shalikashvili and Lt. Gen. Daniel Christman,
a former West Point superintendent, are calling for a second look.
Second,
24 nations, including 12 in Operation Enduring Freedom and nine in
Operation Iraqi Freedom, permit open service. Despite controversy
surrounding the policy change, it has had no negative impact on morale,
cohesion, readiness or recruitment. Our allies did not display such
acceptance back when we voted on "don't ask, don't tell," but we should
consider their common-sense example.
Third, there are not enough
troops to perform the required mission. The Army is "about broken," in
the words of Colin Powell. The Army's chief of staff, Gen. Peter
Schoomaker, told the House Armed Services Committee in December that
"the active-duty Army of 507,000 will break unless the force is
expanded by 7,000 more soldiers a year." To fill its needs, the Army is
granting a record number of "moral waivers," allowing even felons to
enlist. Yet we turn away patriotic gay and lesbian citizens.
The
Urban Institute estimates that 65,000 gays are serving and that there
are 1 million gay veterans. These gay vets include Capt. Cholene
Espinoza, a former U-2 pilot who logged more than 200 combat hours over
Iraq, and Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, who lost his right leg to an
Iraqi land mine. Since 2005, more than 800 personnel have been
discharged from "critical fields" -- jobs considered essential but
difficult in terms of training or retraining, such as linguists,
medical personnel and combat engineers. Aside from allowing us to
recruit and retain more personnel, permitting gays to serve openly
would enhance the quality of the armed forces.
In World War II,
a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the
Nazis' communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering
machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for
modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay? This week,
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that homosexuality
is "immoral" and that the ban on open service should therefore not be
changed. Would Pace call Turing "immoral"?
Since 1993, I have
had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay
and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an
artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's
on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little
about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our
historic challenge. Gen. Pace is entitled, like anyone, to his personal
opinion, even if it is completely out of the mainstream of American
thinking. But he should know better than to assert this opinion as the
basis for policy of a military that represents and serves an entire
nation. Let us end "don't ask, don't tell." This policy has become a
serious detriment to the readiness of America's forces as they attempt
to accomplish what is arguably the most challenging mission in our long
and cherished history.
When you make sweeping pronouncements about the value of a survey-of-religions course, you can probably expect a response from someone who teaches the survey-of-religions course. Patrick O'Donnell does not disappoint in that regard, offering a long and thoughtful email detailing his method. He first emphasizes the importance of "bracketing":
[I was taught that] one could learn about religions, learn interesting, meaningful, important things about religious traditions in a manner that is descriptively true and phenomenologically rich while temporarily 'bracketing' one's own religious and/or philosophical worldview in the sense that one withholds (value) judgments and questions of truth insofar as same might interfere with an accurate portrayal of the religion(s) under question. In Ninian Smart's words, 'it is such bracketing that lies, methodologically, at the heart of the modern study of religion. The jargon is drawn from Husserl, but the practice and message differ from his. The practice, which is somewhat dialectical, involves trying to present the beliefs, symbols and activities of the other...from the perspective of the other. The presuppositions, feelings and attitudes of the explorer of the other's world must be bracketed out as far as possible. That is, we should not bring external judgments to bear upon the other's world.' After all, 'our views are not facts about them [say, Buddhist, Muslims, Confucians, etc.], but facts about us.' Judgments and questions of truth are not dismissed, however, for 'Later, when we have found out what Buddhist Buddhism is we can shape our own [views about this tradition].'
He notes that such bracketing "is perfectly compatible with students learning some of the intra-traditional resources for possible normative critiques of views and practices within a particular tradition." He also challenges the suggestion that immersion in a comprehensive worldview is necessary to provide an authentic taste of the religion:
We study religions as 'ideal-types' because, after all, if we are honest with ourselves, it behooves us to acknowledge that virtually any worldview held by an individual (what I would term, after Habermas, a "lifeworld") is more or less a motley: 'There is not Calvinism in Scotland, but there is Scottish Calvinism (or there was!).' That is to say, 'Critical analysis will suggest that we tend to live in a certain amount of aporia. Do we, when it comes to the crunch, really have a systematic worldview? We have an amalgam of beliefs, which we may publicly characterize in a certain way. I may say that I am an Episcopalian, but how much of my real worldview corresponds to the more or less official views of the Episcopal Church? How much in any case is left out by an "official worldview" which tells me nothing directly about cricket, being Scottish, having a certain scepticism about nationalism, thinking that there is life on other worlds, shelving the problem of evil or other matters. Our values and beliefs are more like a collage than a Canaletto. They do not even have consistency of perspective' (quoting Ninian Smart).
