|
Air Force captain sentenced for homosexual rapes
Here’s something, sent by a reader, that the mainstream media has probably ignored. An Air Force captain named Devery L. Taylor has been found guilty and sentenced to 50 years in prison for raping four men, most of them servicemen, and attempting to rape two others. According to the AP account, “Each of the six men testified during the nine-day court-martial and said they drank with Taylor at bars, later felt drugged and were assaulted by him.” In one instance Taylor had an accomplice, who is also seheduled for trial. Taylor, whose plea for leniency was turned down by the judge, said: “I want you to know how much I have loved being a part of the Air Force and serving this country. It has been difficult for me to be a part of the military and be who I am, which is a homosexual.” Taylor’s comment can be seen as suggesting that he blames the military for the situation, since the military forced him to suppress his homosexuality, with the further implication that this “difficult” situation somehow pushed him to drug and rape men he met in bars. Taylor’s lawyer, Martin Regan, struck a similar note:
Taylor’s only crime was being gay in the military and violating the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which bans people who are openly gay from serving in the armed forces, Regan said.Uh, excuse me, but isn’t that the whole point of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” that if you’re homosexual, you’re not supposed to be in the military? So what are Taylor and Regan complaining about? But here’s where the damnable ambiguity of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” comes in. On one hand, the policy can be seen as saying that if you are homosexual, you really don’t belong in the military at all. On the other hand, the policy can be seen as implying that it’s ok to be homosexual in the military if you don’t tell anyone about it. The problem is that once the door is open that little bit, once people get the idea that it’s ok to be homosexual in the military, in many cases they will (1) want to act on their homosexuality as well, (2) feel justified in doing so, and, further, (3) feel angry at the military for allowing them as homosexuals to be in the military, while simultaneously forcing them to conceal their homosexuality. And this sense of grievance will manifest in more and more destructive ways, e.g., Taylor’s and Regan’s vicious suggestion that it was the military, not Taylor, that was at fault. The psychological dynamic here is similar to that which results when a society allows in unassimilable immigrants but then expects them to assimilate. On one hand, the immigrants feel liberated and empowered by the act of immigration; on the other hand, they feel suppressed and constrained by the host society’s unwelcome and impossible demands that they assimilate, and these mixed signals can result in deep animus, even violence, against the host society. The solution, obviously, is that people from cultures incompatible with the host society should not be allowed to immigrate at all. All of this goes to show why DADT with its studied but unresolvable ambiguity was a terrible idea from the start, though, of course, it’s far better than what the Democrats would impose, which is that homosexuals are allowed to be in the military, period. The correct step would be to repeal DADT and go back to the policy that existed prior to 1993, which was that homosexuals are not allowed to be in the military, period. Let us also remember that in any previous stage of Western civilization Taylor’s crimes would have earned him the death penalty, not a sentence of 50 years that can easily be reduced to 20.
Email entry |