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Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Gays Have a Right to Serve their Country
Every person has a right to serve his country, gays included. All have a right to serve their country openly without hiding who they are. It’s kind of odd that so many heterosexuals who are not prepared to make that kind of sacrifice, refusing to enlist in the military and preferring instead to live as armchair warriors, are condemning those with a patriotic passion to fight for freedom.
The other day a woman called my radio show on WABC 770AM in NYC to argue with me. She was adamantly against the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.’ She said a homosexual lifestyle was dirty and against the Bible. I asked her whether she had children of military age and whether they, as good, clean, heterosexuals would enlist in place of the gays whom she would ban. She responded, “They are doing other things to serve their country.” I thought so.
Homosexuality is a religious sin. The Bible makes that much clear. But it is not a moral sin. Rather than being like the moral (and religious) sin of adultery, in which lying, deception, and injury to an innocent party are committed, homosexuality is an infraction between G-d and man. In that sense it is akin to lighting a fire on the Sabbath, an act strictly forbidden by the Bible. No moral sin has taken place, but it is forbidden on religious grounds.
I am a Rabbi and I take the words of the Bible seriously. But I will not call gay men and women names, I will not become a homophobe, and I will not make the error of mistaking sins that are deeply unethical, like ‘Do Not Steal,’ with those that are simply irreligious, like gay men living together.
On the same radio show a member of the military called in and said, having served with homosexuals in the military under ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ he too was opposed to the reversal of the ban. ‘Too many gay men hit on me in the showers and the barracks, and were pretty aggressive about it, for me to think that they should ever be allowed to serve openly in the military. It will only make things worse.” To be sure, I don’t agree with the sentiment. I have worked with gay men and have become very close to many of them and they have yet to hit on me even once. Granted, I am about five-foot-six, have a bushy beard, and have a monopack rather than a six-pack. But jokes aside, even if I disagree with the sentiment I respect the veteran offering the opinion because he actually served. He fought, he sacrificed, and he has earned the right to a strong opinion on the matter. I believe his opinion is flawed in that it is probably more of an argument for the complete and utter separation of men and women in the military than it is against the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.’ Still, he is a veteran and has earned the right to be strongly heard. The rest of us, however, who have, for the most part, put personal considerations like fear of injury or love of making a little bit more money that what’s on offer in the military ahead of giving our country a few years of our lives, and perhaps life itself, should perhaps be a little bit more humble about elevating our opinions on a par with those who have enlisted.
In general, America has become homosexual-obsessed. In nearly every election cycle it’s all-gay’s-all-the-time. Rather than talking the need for values in American life, like greater spirituality and less materialism, we talking incessantly about gay marriage. We have a 50 percent divorce rate. We’ve got about half of all teens having heterosexual sex at ages where they are absolutely not ready for that kind of adult experience and it is deeply injurious to their ability to later create bonds of intimacy. But do ever talk about this stuff? Nope. Because the breakdown of marriage, many contend, is all due to gay marriage. But if we straight people were just a little bit more honest with ourselves we would have to confess that we’ve done a pretty good job of ruining marriage on our own without any outside help, thank you very much. There is no need for easy scapegoats.
The Bible uses the word ‘abomination’ approximately 122 times. True, it uses it for homosexual sex, but it does so also for envy, jealousy, and arrogance. Perhaps, at times, we religious heterosexuals are guilty of allowing our principles to spill over into outright homophobia, which is a sin against G-d and might just constitute something of an abomination itself. For all are G-d’s children, and all try their best, amid a fallible nature, to serve G-d and country as best they can.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the founder of This World: The Values Network, has just published ‘Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.’ http://www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Brian Kresge
Excellent article as always, Rabbi.
A couple of considerations from the voice of military experience, but mind you, we live in a nation that values civilian control of its military, for precisely the reason that our forces should be the highest reflection of their moral fiber. That said, if the general population determines, and it seems that it has by polling and support in our elected government, that DADT should go away, then go away it shall.
A caution, however, one that goes beyond shower homophobia. A little known fact, perhaps a byproduct of our forces’ gender integration decades ago, is that only rape counselors and police investigators perhaps spend more time receiving sexual assault training than the military. Because the military has a problem with violence and then subsequent under-reporting, we spend an inordinate amount of time covering the topic, watching corny videos that we laugh at when we should be taking it seriously.
Why do we laugh? Because both the statistics and the video highlight a very sad fact… a significant portion of sexual assault is conducted by male service members identifying as heterosexual against fellow male service members. Not unlike those stories we hear of effeminate fellows in prison becoming gang “property.“ We laugh, yes, at the apparent absurdity, but in a highly sexualized environment, especially where sexuality is so pent up yet porn is on every laptop, it is indeed a problem.
And therein lies my concern. Repealing DADT may have the effect of equalizing a form of discrimination that we know to have its origin in religious law, something we can’t truly and respectfully legislate in a nation that separates religious law from ethical law. Yes, I feel strongly that it’s wrong, and for the same reasons I hate murder, rape, and theft, because the Torah and our sages say so, but there’s a common causality behind the others that doesn’t exist with our dietary or this particular sexual law.
One of the other arguments made, is that chaplains being forced to officiate for gays against their doctrine, is false. There is a partition between serving troops in an official capacity and within the religious proscriptions of their ecclesiastical endorsers. Just as an Orthodox rabbinical chaplain does not have to convene an intergender minyan, neither will an Evangelical chaplain have to provide communion to an openly gay individual if that is against his faith.
But back to my original concerns, we must brace ourselves for the real possibility that by ending DADT, we are introducing another victim class to the military. We can say, but not substantively support, that gender integration has been successful in spite of the value women have brought to the service, but the amount of time a soldier spends in sexual assault training is about equal in time and resources to components of vital combat training.
Repealing DADT will introduce a new component of “how do we handle this?“ especially the first few times an openly gay soldier is raped. These are distractions for even the lowest level of command that are deliterious when a military is in its peacetime lull, let alone whilst waging two wars.
That said, the military will find a way. It’s what we do, but just so long as civilians and the press don’t do their surprised outrage bit when we run into the challenges of implementation. DADT has been such a poor policy for so long that instant gratification has dulled our senses as to what will follow repeal.
Food for thought. Thank you so much, Rabbi, for offering up a Jewish voice on this issue. Thus far, only PA’s Guard rabbi has commented on Jews in Green about it. It’s a tough issue, which brings out divisions even within our various movements, let alone the wider culture.
Be well.
B -
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Grizzly Bear Mom
I’m a female veteran with service acquired disabilities. I see gays in the military as a logistical problem. When I was the only woman assigned to combat units, I would decline to go into the field with them because I didn’t want to further burden the supply Sgt by making him provide me toilet and billeting facilities. I was also uncomfortable being “in the woods with 300 men”, 299 of which were behaved professionally. No, healthy gays won’t be coming on to uninterested straights, just like straight people, but I can understand people not feeling comfortable disrobing and showering around either the same or opposite gender potentially interested in them sexually. Outside of deployments, the genders have different housing, but I can’t imagine having a gay barracks. I’ve been out of the service quite a while, but I am not aware of a significant portion of sexual assaults being males raping males. That sounds like a bull s… story to me, as does the comparison of equal numbers of training for combat preparation and rape prevention. We would handle the rape of a gay service member exactly the same way we handle it for a straight one. I am aware of violence against woman and attended only one hour of training on it in a ten year career. I know that that for every combat “soldier” in the field, 10 people support them, some of which are women, so to say that we can’t support gender integration is the service is ludicrous.
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Brian Kresge
Grizzly Bear Mom, I’ve been in for 16 years, and I’ve served in combat units, and I’ve only seen the uptick in sexual violence training in the last four, because of a significant rise in it. I know a unit of 120 or so guys that would concur, to say the least, so your experience may be dated at this point.
The statistics speak for themselves. If you haven’t been in for a while, then you haven’t seen the DoD-prepared slide shows nor the videos they show during sexual assault prevention training. The statistic is not BS, it is a harsh reality that sexual assault does not know gender barriers within the military. As I said above, there is still a problem with under-reporting of sexual assault, especially with the stigma associated with male-on-male sexual violence.
And as for calling out a comparison of sexual assault prevention training - consider this, in mobilization, Soldiers spend as much time in sexual assault prevention training as they do in, say for instance, vehicle rollover training, which is in fact killing troops. We also spend more time in finance classes about how to handle our pay than some aspects of combat training, and grunts always gripe about admin training. I’m not saying the aggregate combat training is approached by sexual assault, merely that we spend more time doing that than some aspects of our combat training.
And my point was missed in its entirety - no one suggests gender integration should be repealed - what I’m saying is that we don’t consider the challenges, and even you highlighted them, insurmountable as far as women and men serving alongside. Similarly, the challenges resulting from repealing DADT are not insurmountable either, but in the interest of internal force protection, we have to consider what is inevitably in store for some gay troops and be prepared for it. It’s happening now without openly gay troops. Hopefully this will be identified in the DoD review so it doesn’t become the distraction that sexual assault prevention training unfortunately has to be. We deal with the current circumstances because our military is fighting two wars, and historically, force-on-force crime does increase during frequent mobilizations. Rape in a combat zone is especially demoralizing because of the profound isolation one is already experiencing. It’s a facet of DADT that absolutely must be considered.
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