2006 Zogby poll that found that three out of four (73 percent) of active duty military personnel said they feel comfortable around gay people.

A number of countries, including the UK allow gays & lesbians to serve openly.  Doesn’t appear to have hurt their readiness or performance.

In the UK, all three services - army, navy, and airforce - had representatives marching in uniform at LGBT Pride in London this year.

All three services - the army was the last - have joined “Diversity Champions” - an LGB organization that works for equality in the workplace.

All three services have mandated legal equality for married and civil-partnered couples - from pensions to quarters on base.

So if McCain really feels that lesbians and gays are an “intolerable risk” in the military, if he gets to be President, he had better disinvite the UK military from any more joint ventures. After all, it would be an intolerable risk.

I’d love to have someone ask him that - I mean, for starters, his ignorant babbling about how he’s sure gays in the British military have to stay closeted on active service would be fun. But if someone actually convinced him that the British military has regulations against requiring people to stay in the closet, that two lesbians in the UK military can register a civil partnership and get to live together on base as a legally-wed couple, I’d really like to see him justify in public either that British gay soldiers somehow aren’t an “intolerable risk” or that they are, but he’s not going to ban the UK from supporting the US on any other mad military ventures, er, because…

I always find it fascinating that the “logic” of the anti-gay folks runs all over the principle map.

Gay marriage cannot be left to those who it affects and the people whose job it is to make and interpret laws, because public opinion on such a critical issue overrides the needs and interests of those involved, and the people have the right to decide such things.

However, with gay people in the military, the reverse is “true” - the public has no right to voice an opinion on something that is unquestionably another foundation of society, and in fact, even the people most directly affected by it (troops of all orientations) get no say, even via polls. No, on this issue, only policy makers internal to the organization get a say.

No stick is too small to beat gay people with. Consistency and logic need not apply.

Lymis:

I’m pro-gay and pro-gays-in-the-military.  But isn’t your argument a bit flawed in that it fails to account for the fact that while marriage is essentially a civil institution in which the public is an integrated part, the military is a society-within-the-society which operates under its own mores, established behavioural codes and specific legal framework?

I’m not arguing against your goal, which is sound; I’m merely taking friendly issue with the analogy that you have drawn.

It seems to me that the real resistance to gays service is centered on (a) the religious right and (b) senior command staff of a wholly different generation.  There’s a couple of generations of people out there who just haven’t absorbed the seismic shift on public attitudes towards the normalcy of homosexuality, and still define their worldview as “normal”.

Seeker,

Sort of. It is true that marriage is an institution that the civil public is integrally involved it, but at the same time, each individual marriage isn’t. Each individual marriage is a contract between the parties involved both with each other and with the government. And while tax dollars support civil programs that may advantage or disadvantage the individuals in a given marriage, the marriage itself is not publicly funded - each family funds itself. (setting aside things like Social Security, unemployment, welfare, etc, which are, while nominally individual, certainly affected by marital status.)

On the other hand, yes, the military is a society within a society with its own rules and (not so clearly known by most civilians) with its own distinct set of rights that are not the same as those of civilians in many cases. But at the same time, it is publicly funded, publicly overseen, Constitutionally established, and, especially while it is all-volunteer, since the civilian public provides the entire personnel pool, hard to make a case that it ISN’T an “institution in which the public is an integrated part.”

The Constitution clearly enumerates civilian control of the military, far from setting it aside to operate independently of society.

The current framing of the issue is on your side. Marriage is a civil institution, while the military is not.

But there are very real ways in which marriage isn’t an institution. There is no public body of married people who get to set the rules for all other married people. A majority of neighbors don’t get to declare someone else’s married null without their consent no matter how the parties behave. Even the government doesn’t get to unilaterally annul or divorce two people who contracted a valid marriage in the first place. In essence, once a couple meets the legal standards to marry and follows the rules to get registered, what they do within the marriage is entirely up to them.

The public does not in any meaningful way participate in any given marriage, and the aggregate of all marriages is not in any meaningful way a collective entity, beyond being part of the collection of all individual marriages. The Dobsons of the world and their opinions notwithstanding, the ISN’T a governing body that defines allowable behavior within marriage.

The “logic” for leaving the military alone is, in essence, “they have a job to do, and it needs to be left to the people involved to figure out how best to do it.” Precisely why isn’t that exactly the same “logic” for leaving two citizens alone to figure out the goals and conduct of their marriage?

Any issue that actually impacts either on all marriages or on specific marriages, such as a (theoretical) proposal to eliminate spousal social security, or some such, is certainly something society as a whole gets to decide. But allowing same sex couples to marry does not in any way affect other couples within their own marriage. The “institution” has no more justification declaring whether or not a same sex couple can marry than they would have in declaring which opposite-sex couples may breed or not.

The prevailing language is used as though “Marriage” is the sort of institution that polices itself and its members, and acts as a collective in directing the behavior, goals, and eligibility of its members. But it isn’t. Except, apparently, for the purpose of excluding gay people.

(seeker brandishing fist like a hammy actor)

Curse, you, Lymis, for a coherent and cogent riposte!  Cuuuuuurse you, I say!!