These fuckers are in the military. You do what your goddamned commander says. Duh. End of subject. IF the CO doesn’t have the guts to do the right thing, you get rid of him or her, not the fucking competent and loyal and patriotic gay soldiers.

I love it how these assholes are all concerned about showers and shit. Hello, where are they when probably these same soldiers were raping and harassing women? Oh, wait, that’s right. That’s what women are for. Gay people fuck up that paradigm, because these straight guys hate women so much and yet are so devoted to idealizing the straight male ideal that the homosexuality that would seem to be the only other option is absolutely forbidden to them, even though it must tantalize them terribly.

Guys who hate gays hate women. I say we do ourselves a favor and get rid of all of these buggers. Far from being in danger from gay men, I’d say they pose a danger to not just gay soldiers but women as well. People with these simplistic views on sexuality always view sex as a conquering act performed on someone by a conquerer. They can’t conceive of sex between equals. For them sex is always a little bit rape because there’s so much power in there for them.

Get rid of them. They’re a danger to straights, gays, women, and civilians. We can test for all kinds of things: why can’t they test for that?

Why does it matter what rank and file soldiers think about anything?  As Ginmar said, they’re in the military, the moral code of letting gays serve does simply not apply in this situation.  Showering in front of people of the same sex isn’t a big deal in any normal well-adjusted person’s mind.  If a gay man hits on a straight man, telling them no and that your straight should be sufficient to stop any other forthcoming issue and while everybody gets a little embarrassed it isn’t the end of the world. 

This is clearly a political ploy to prove our military is homophobic and stupid.  Good job republicans for showing our repugnant the game can get.

The thing is, the sort of person you want in the military is the anti-thesis of the homophobe. If he’s homophobic I guarantee you there’ll be problems with other minorities…..like, I don ‘t know, Muslims. Get rid of them.

The survey reminds me of one thing: The only people who matter when it comes to policy about gay folks, like DADT, are anxious, terrified and bigoted heterosexuals.

Why? There’s no real reason to do so, as it’s a web clip, so time constraints aren’t relevant. What editorial judgment was made that Griffin’s interest in a logical reason for the survey is not newsworthy to readers of CNN’s web site?

It’s more marketing judgment (which, sadly, is often an editorial call). You have two public representatives of a brand, one an access journalist who’s basically trying to justify a Pentagon press release and please her “multiple sources” and the other a newsreader married to a market researcher who’s sheepishly asking “really good questions” to which Starr obviously didn’t have proper answers prepared.

That’s embarrassing to the brand, so you edit the double-ender to project everyone in their proper roles in cablenewsworld: a military beat expert and the authority figure host who nods along, conveying legitimacy on her insights.

By the way, I don’t know if Starr has anything invested in DADT one way or the other. She’s defensive and taken aback because Griffin had the temerity to ask her more details about this survey than can be gleaned from a Pentagon press release and a 5-minute autopilot chat with a couple of DoD PR flacks. The survey could have been about mess hall fare and she would have reacted the same way.

Fun facts from Matt Taibbi:

True, the Pentagon does have perhaps the single largest public relations apparatus on earth – spending $4.7 billion on P.R. in 2009 alone and employing 27,000 people, a staff nearly as large as the 30,000-person State Department – but is that really enough to ensure positive coverage in a society armed with a constitutionally-guaranteed free press?

And true, most of the major TV outlets are completely in the bag for the Pentagon, with two of them (NBC/GE and Logan’s own CBS, until recently owned by Westinghouse, one of the world’s largest nuclear weapons manufacturers) having operated for years as leaders in both the broadcast media and weapons-making businesses.

I think they can find room in that budget to run self-affirming polls of their own org’s constituents, with some yummy lunches (cocktails included, mind you) at Crystal City restaurants thrown in for favourite journalists.

There are perfectly sound reasons for doing employee surveys like this.  The military is about to have an about face policy change that is going to affect a lot of people.  As much as I believe “get over yourself and your bigotry” is the correct response, a more nuanced approach is probably better.  Leadership does need to know what concerns people have, if only to come up with good answers when questions of “how do I handle this situation” come up.  Also, other surveys have indicated that the younger troops are much less worried about the gays than the older leadership.  This survey will probably show that, and hopefully will be used to educate the officer class.

It’s also a good idea to run surveys like this periodically, to find out how effective your informational outreach has been.

This is clearly a political ploy to prove our military is homophobic and stupid.  Good job republicans for showing our repugnant the game can get.

And good job Democrats for controlling two branches of the government and still letting the Republicans win.

Yeah, Weston, I’m on the “survey probably isn’t a terrible idea, in theory” bench.  While it’s true that in the military you do what your CO and ultimately the commander in chief tells you, having some idea what the thoughts and opinions are throughout the rank structure seems like a good idea.

BUT—here’s the thing.  I’m betting the people setting up the survey are hoping/expecting that the result will give them an excuse to not do anything about DADT, because that’s “what the troops want.”  However, I’m not convinced that the result will be anything of the kind—every military or former-military person I’ve talked with on the subject (admittedly, not a representative sample or a particularly large one) has said that while they were serving, there were gay soldiers in their units, they knew who they were, and it wasn’t a problem.  That goes for my grandfather, who served in WWII, and a Bill O’Reilly-watching former marine that I used to work with at my last job who served in Desert Storm, and some of my students (community college)  who served recently or are still serving. 

Yet I am concerned that even if the survey results match up with my own anecdata, they’ll be spun to reinforce the story that the Pentagon wants to tell.  Obviously the survey is going to show that *some* troops would have a problem, and there’s no standard of how low that number has to be before we say, “Yeah, enough of the troops say it’s OK that we should go ahead,” so no matter what the number is, it can be spun as “too many to risk such a drastic change.”  (I’m speculating wildly here, of course, and I would be delighted to be proved wrong.)

I knew Bill Clinton’s lack of military experience was getting him into trouble the first time he said he was going to “discuss” they gay ban with the Join Chiefs.  It should have been strictly, “Your objections are noted, gentlemen.  You have your orders.  Carry on.”

I’m pretty sure that actually following The Uniform Code of Military Justice would resolve both DADT and rape in the military.  Too bad it’s infrequently applied.

You guys are misisng something. Isn’t this survey going to arrive via email? Hello. Duh. This cannot be a truly open and fair survey if the DOD can identify the people who are taking it.

And good job Democrats for controlling two branches of the government and still letting the Republicans win.

They haven’t won, I fail to see how DADT won’t get repealed anyways.  In the political game of civil rights the American Public are repugnant fools.  You need to simply pass the law and let their feelings change once it’s done.  There have been countless surveys proving this effect within society.  We went from a majority anti-black society in 1948 to a minority anti-black society in 1958 (mind you, it was a swing of about 15%) so it can be argued by simply passing the legislation people will stop being so bigoted.

Just as an aside, she didn’t seem taken aback to me.

I can’t imagine why CNN deleted that section. But then, I don’t watch CNN so I have no good frame of reference as to what they usually do/do not do. It hardly seemed like a controversial discussion…

Were white soldiers polled about their attitudes re black soldiers back in WWII?

Millie just asked what I was going to say; Truman didn’t ask “Gee, white racist troopers, how do you feel about showering with the nigras?”.

This is ridiculous.  When I was in Panama practically the female barracks at the Aviation company there had scads of lesbian gals, we all knew, everybody just did their work and got on with it.  Not of the straight women got icked out, they dealt with it like you’d deal with any other sexual issue in any other line of work. 

Of course, one of the open secrets in the Army is that lots of commanders look the other way about homosexual women because they’d be unable to accomplish the mission of they threw out all the gals.  Gay men?  Harder for them to be honest; the guys are pretty rough about this.

But the bottom line is this; if national policy is (as it should be) one of equal rights, then when the national command authority says “You WILL implement this equal-rights policy” there’s no point in asking the joes whether they want it or not.  Of COURSE they don’t.  Most of the white guys didn’t want the blacks in 1949, most of the men didn’t want the women in 1978, a lot of the straights won’t want the out-gays now. 

It didn’t matter in ‘49 and ‘78, and it doesn’t matter now.

Okay, Pentagon. Out of the goodness of my heart and my desire to reduce the amount of verbal wank on television, I’m going to give you a sample survey.

Question 1.
How do you feel about repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and allowing gay, lesbian, and bisexual servicemembers to openly serve in the military?
A. Hell yeah! It’s the twenty-first goddamn century!
B. Sure, okay, whatever.
C. I’m unsure, but I guess it probably won’t be too bad.
D. I don’t like it, but I can live with it.
E. FUCK NO! I went into the military to beat up queers!

Question 2.
One of the same-sex members of your unit is known to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. What’s your response?
A. I’m totally fine with it.
B. I don’t care.
C. I might be a little uncomfortable at first, but once I get to know him/her it probably won’t matter.
D. I’m a little nervous in the showers/barracks/tent.
E. I freak the fuck out and/or punch him/her in the face.

Question 3.
How long have you served in the military?
A. Less than a year
B. One to five years
C. Five to ten years
D. Ten to twenty years
E. I’m within spitting distance of retirement

Question 4.
Please write down your age and rank

Question 5.
What sex are you? (Please check the sex we have on file for you. Baby steps.)
A. Male
B. Female

Question 6.
How do you feel about some commanding officers’ opposition to overturning DADT? Check all that apply:
A. It’s not my place to say, but… why do they have such a problem with gays in the military?
B. It’s not my place to say, but… why do they even care when they haven’t been out in the field in years?
C. It’s not my place to say, but… why are they so scared about the possibility of male-on-male sexual harassment and assault when they obviously don’t give a fuck about male-on-female sexual harassment and assault?
D. It’s not my place to say, but… how would it affect them in any way? They all have private quarters.
E. It’s not my place to say, but… are they just trying to avoid having to buy more wedding gifts? Because once it’s overturned you know there’s going to be a general who marries his long-term partner and invites half the upper brass to the wedding. Are they just trying to weasel out of buying another gravy boat?

Question 7.
What do you feel about this survey? Check all that apply.
A. It’s a waste of time.
B. It’ll be spun by opponents of DADT to reflect the results they want.
C. It’ll be spun by supporters of DADT to reflect the results they want.
D. It’s a publicity stunt.
E. Why can’t we get a survey for stuff that actually matters, like our favorite MREs?
F. Can we get a survey about the war in Afghanistan next?