GAY SOLDIERS - WHO CARES?

If you ask me, and no one did, most of what is being said these past few days about the 'DADT' policy of the US Military expiring is so much tosh.

Military members have got married, some have flung open the closet door so hard it has broke off and others have gone on YOUTUBE to ring up Dad and proclaim their formerly hidden sexuality.  Some members of the media are even calling the newly 'open' gay service members heroes.  Fancy that...

Who really cares, save the very politically active members of the Lavender Elite, who never will be truly happy until they have outed every gay person in America and made sure that one and all have had GAY shoved into their faces multiple times?

Call me the product of my generation, but it never was a burning issue with me.

Many of the Lavender Elite do not remember Barry Goldwater.  I do and I remember what he had to say on the subject of gays in the military long before recent events unfolded.

The year was 1994 and Mr. Goldwater had this to say to Washington Post;

“At 85, after a life in politics spanning five decades (he retired from the Senate in 1987), Mr. Conservative has found himself an unlikely new career: as a gay rights activist. [snip] This month he signed on as honorary co-chairman of a drive to pass a federal law preventing job discrimination against homosexuals. The effort, dubbed Americans Against Discrimination, is being spearheaded by the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the influential gay lobbying organization. “The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay,” Goldwater asserts. “You don’t have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that’s what brings me into it.””

“The first time this came up was with the question, should there be gays in the military?” Goldwater says. “Having spent 37 years of my life in the military as a reservist, and never having met a gay in all of that time, and never having even talked about it in all those years, I just thought, why the hell shouldn’t they serve? They’re American citizens. As long as they’re not doing things that are harmful to anyone else. … So I came out for it.”

After more than 50 years in the military and politics, I am still amazed to see how upset people can get over nothing. Lifting the ban on gays in the military isn’t exactly nothing, but it’s pretty damned close

Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They’ll still be serving long after we’re all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.

But most Americans should be shocked to know that while the country’s economy is going down the tubes, the military has wasted half a billion dollars over the past decade chasing down gays and running them out of the armed services. It’s no great secret that military studies have proved again and again that there’s no valid reason for keeping the ban on gays.

When you get down to it, no American able to serve should be allowed, much less given an excuse, not to serve his or her country. We need all our talent.

The Lavender Elite will no doubt laugh this off.  Barry Goldwater was Republican and round the bend.  Truth be told, Barry Goldwater was a public servant most of life, along with having served in military with honour.  He ran for president.  I rather like to think he also spoke true on many subjects, way ahead of his time in many ways.

The real heroes are the countless men and women who risked much in order to answer the call to arms in our country's hour of need.  WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the current conflicts in the Middle East.  These brave men and women served their country and then went home and got on with their lives.  They added another label to that tin, pushing GAY further down the list of contents.

What a lot of time was wasted on a matter that truly did not matter...