In response to a question from a Marine frustrated over the Congress’ decision to drop the 17-year “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Marines in Afghanistan on June 5 that they won’t be able to opt out of their enlistment to avoid serving with homosexuals military personnel.
“Gates, who is on a tour of Afghanistan to bid farewell to the troops before stepping down at the end of the month, was quizzed by a Marine sergeant about the controversial policy during a question and answer session at a base in southwestern Helmand Province,” reported Reuters News.
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“Sir, we joined the Marine Corps because the Marine Corps has a set of standards and values that is better than that of the civilian sector,” the Marine sergeant explained to Gates. “And we have gone and changed those values and repealed the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. We have not given the Marines a chance to decide whether they wish to continue serving under that. Is there going to be an option for those Marines that no longer wish to serve due to the fact their moral values have not changed?”
To which Gates replied, “No, you’ll have to complete your … enlistment just like everybody else,” adding, “The reality is that you don’t all agree with each other on your politics, you don’t agree with each other on your religion, you don’t agree with each other on a lot of things. But you still serve together. And you work together. And you look out for each other. And that’s all that matters.”
Referring to the ongoing sensitivity training now underway throughout the armed services (photo above), designed to convince and/or intimidate military personnel into receiving homosexual soldiers into their ranks, Gates assured his leatherneck audience that if all goes according to plan, “nothing will change. You will still have to abide by the same rules of behavior, the same discipline, the same respect for each other that has been the case through all the history of the Marine Corps.”
In its efforts to assist soldiers in transitioning to a pro-homosexual military, the Defense Department has launched a series of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” websites that include, among other features, patriotically themed video messages from military leaders reminding soldiers that it is their duty to embrace homosexual colleagues; Frequently Asked Questions pages telling soldiers what will happen if they do not (and informing them that “consensual sodomy between consenting adults … is a protected liberty”); and a series of upbeat articles assuring one and all that the nation’s military leaders expect few problems with implementation of the repeal.
But Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council noted that after all the expert testimony warning DOD and Congress about the consequences, and with all the resources and effort the Pentagon is expending on preparing for implementation, “it’s incredibly disingenuous to suggest that the military won’t be affected by repeal.”
Noted Perkins: “This isn’t a change — it’s a complete upheaval for the entire force. More than anyone, Secretary Gates should understand the major implications for the two million-plus active duty and reserve personnel. Whether the issue is as broad as religious freedom or as basic as bunks and bathrooms, forcing the military to embrace open homosexuality will have real and devastating consequences for the men and women in uniform.”
Colonel Ron Ray (USMC, retired), a decorated veteran of the Vietnam conflict and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, pointed out to The New American that since President Obama’s announcement in his State of the Union Address that he intended to pursue the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Defense Secretary Gates has been in full support of the move “despite the consistent and overwhelming opposition from senior military leaders reaching back many decades and confirmed in three different polls of active and retired Flag and General Officers.”
Ray noted that the media has spared no effort to cast the repeal as an issue of “civil rights” or “discrimination,” although such issues cannot be reconciled with sodomy and other deviant homosexual behaviors, which “have been incompatible with American military service since 1775,” said Ray. He added that the U.S. military’s Exemplary Conduct standards “demand self-sacrifice, virtue, honor, subordination, patriotism, and uniformity which require duty above any self interest”— standards that Gates and other mouthpieces for a homosexualized military have somehow overlooked.
One significant ruling on the issue that rarely see the light of day in the debate over homosexuals in the military is Steffan v. Perry (1994), a test case heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1994, a year after the enactment of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Col. Ray, who filed a brief in the case on behalf of the Naval Aviation Foundation, First Principles Press, and other General Officer groups, recalled that by a seven to three margin the ten-judge panel ruled to uphold the “founding principle of our military that ‘homosexuality is incompatible with American military service.’”
Furthermore, the court ruled that any indication of homosexual orientation, even without homosexual behavior, was illegal under existing military law, “and regulations and any discharge from the Naval Services was constitutional,” recalled Ray.
Col. Ray emphasized that “for more than 230 years, the U.S. Armed Forces has had fundamental military first principles. Those first principles became statutes, enacted three times by Congress, as recently as 1997, and titled Exemplary Conduct, written by John Adams and six other founders. The statutes instruct our military and Congressional leaders, and declare open homosexuality is incompatible with military service.”
While President Obama signed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” repeal in December, the policy will remain officially in place until 60 days after the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify to Congress that the Armed Forces are prepared to move ahead with the repeal.
Ray said that America’s military faces a crisis as the latest move by the President and Defense Department threatens to “institutionalize perversion” in the nation’s armed forces. “No longer will military leaders need to be ‘vigilant to guard against and suppress immoral and dissolute behaviors’ in America’s military institution,” Col. Ray told The New American. “Mr Gates is wrong, and great change is afoot. This is the dawning of a new ‘moral order,’ not only in the U.S. military, but ultimately in the nation at large.”
Photo: Marine Corps instructor Maj. Daryl DeSimone speaks to Marines during Tier 3 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal training at Camp Pendleton, Calif., April 28, 2011.
