Aug 24th, 2006
Since Arabic specialists in the military are a dime a dozen…
The witchhunt continues for anyone in the military who is gay, or anyone suspected to be gay which apparently includes any man who spends his freetime doing something other than watching football.
Last month’s discharge of an Arabic language specialist was sparked by a rumor from an anonymous email.
According to SLDN, the suspected homosexual was screened with solid truth-seeking questions like:
Do you work off duty with the local community theater? and Do you know or are you aware of anyone who believes you are a homosexual?
This is but one of thousands of examples of how horribly destructive “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is on those who serve our country. Not just for those who are gay or lesbian, but also those who are suspected of being gay or lesbian.
When I was interviewing people for Families Like Mine, I met Topher Connors, a grown son of a gay dad. Topher faced the impact of DA/DT while serving in the military, not because he is gay (he’s not) but because he was not openly homophobic. He told me about times when he would speak up against a gay joke, and other soldiers would raise their eyebrows, suggesting that his reason for speaking up was because he was gay.
I don’t believe that civilians can even begin to imagine the climate of hostility this policy fosters, not to mention justified paranoia. Check out the survival guide SLDN provides to prevent servicemembers from becoming suspect. Who can concentrate on serving their country when they have to keep track of all of those details?
Former Sergeant Bleu Copas is at least the fifty-fifth Arabic language specialist who has been dismissed from his military duties for failure to demonstrate that he aspires to engage in heterosexual intercourse.
Never mind if he could be instrumental in investigating and stopping the next terrorist plot. If he’s stage-managing his hometown’s production of “Pippin,” he’s a threat to national security.
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Related Posts:
Support Our [Heterosexual] Troops
Queer Activism, Kissing, and National Security
Receiving email from me will make you gay.
You know, I had a high-school friend who (1) became an Arabic translator in the Army, and (2) is gay (neither of us knew about the other back then, sad).
Unfortunately, I’ve totally failed to find him since then; I think he’s broken all connections to his hometown. But, every time I see this story, I wonder if he was one of the victims.
Of course, the real victims are the soldiers who die because keeping our army’s heterosexuality pure is more important than having soldiers who understand the language of the place they’re fighting in. Better dead than comerade to a homo, after all.
This is an interesting post. My husband and I discussed it. He feels that if he it’s expected of a heterosexual man (in this case, him) to be openly homophobic and if he isn’t that somehow means he is either gay or bi-sexual. He dislikes watching sports, but he’s the geek chained to his computer by choice–by the love of computers, processors and operating systems and their flaws. In High School, because he didn’t date, he was openly harrassed about his sexuality.
This disturbs me as a woman on many levels. Just because your interests don’t involve sports, or what’s “defined” as being male doesn’t mean you’re not heterosexual.
And hey, what about my gay friend who loves NASCAR? Hetero’s at his work automatically assume he’s hetero too because he likes NASCAR. Snort.
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