This Is Not About Sex

June 4, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

Today’s Washington Post has a nice article about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It’s by Peter Moskos, who ought to know. His father, Charles Moskos, was a military sociologist – the man who coined the phrase. The point of Peter’s article is that for his father, DADT wasn’t just some abstract rule or impersonal policy recommendation; it reflected his own feelings about sexuality.
My father believed in something that seems quaintly old-fashioned today: sexual modesty. He didn’t like being confronted with anybody’s sexuality, gay or straight.
He wasn’t going to ask, and he didn’t want to be around if somebody told.

I get the impression that a similar squeamishness is what underlies the current opposition to proposals to scrap DADT and allow gays to serve openly. The difference is that Charles Moskos was willing to admit it. The opposition today usually talks not about sex but about “good order and discipline” or “readiness.”

I remember Dale Bumpers’ speech defending Bill Clinton against impeachment. The impeachment came in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but what Clinton was charged with was lying under oath. The charge was perjury and obstruction of justice, but as Bumpers told the Senate,
H. L. Mencken said one time, “When you hear somebody say, ‘This is not about money’– it’s about money.” And when you hear somebody say, “This is not about sex” – it's about sex.
I can’t help thinking that behind all the arguments about “unit effectiveness” and the like, what motivates these opponents is a kind of prudishness, a feeling of uneasiness about sexuality– maybe their own but certainly that of others, especially if those others are homosexual.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sex, straight as well as gay, remains a problem in the military for reasons that remain unclear. The book, the Lonely soldiers by Helen Benedict goes into some issues in regards to female soldiers. Not long ago, I did a pilot interview with a former marine and retired big city cop to see whether he and his Green Beret associates might have a book of interest on a defense contracting project in Iraq. When he began to talk about the females in his group and around the Forward Operating Base, his language turned increasingly crude. If I didn't know him better, I would have taken him for a classic misogynist of the most poisonous type. A vet in my class was one of the few who was o.k. with women in his unit didn't always feel that way. Initially, the first in his unit was not well liked because she was having an affair with a higher ranking officer outside. Then she proved herself in a fight and her reputation changed. This particular vet is also open minded about gays in the military. One of the problems of women in a war zone from the perspective of men, appears to be the issue of sex. In the fabulous book, Mass Casualties by spc Michael Anthony, he humorously makes it crystal clear that the army does not like its soldiers having sex (heterosexual sex in this case). One of the problems with women and sex that appeared to emerge in informal conversations and pilot interviews suggests that jealousy is an overt reason. The men resent the power some women appear to wield when they have a sexual relationship with a higher ranking officer. The men resent the discontent and jealousies that can arise in a small unit when one or more of their females is having sex with a guy then rotates on to another, creating fights at times. they also resent how manipulative some guys become to get what they want from a woman. I had one vet in my class diss women because they "always" got pregnant to get out from "downrange" (where they do end up on the front lines, despite the claim women aren't in combat. I pointed out that the problem was half the men's. Condoms were freely available in the PX of pretty much every military base in Iraq and Afghanistan and could also be ordered on drugstore.com. I can't figure out why a lot of men in the military have a problem with homosexuality. Some have told me they have had gay men in their units and it made no difference to them. Others have reacted with a loathing that could only come from some primitive place like in the acultural wild lands of the Midwest, if you'll forgive my haughty stereotype. So in summary, it's not only gays who are viewed as a serious problem but women as well. Sex is a complicated issue for the military-whether gay or straight, unless it involves prostitutes and they are a little harder to come by today than they were in Vietnam.