The new “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regime—directed at the critics of homosexualism

Dean Ericson had this idea yesterday. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has now been reversed and will be applied, not to homosexuals, but to military service members who disapprove of homosexuality. Here’s the way it will work:

1. The fundamental principle is that disapproval of homosexual conduct is incompatible with military service. Therefore such disapproval will be prohibited in the military.

2. But the military, out of respect for the privacy of its members, will not ask prospective and enlisted members in the services if they disapprove of homosexual conduct, and will not investigate them to find out whether they disapprove of homosexual conduct (“Don’t ask”).

3. However, if a service member openly expresses his disapproval of homosexuality, he will be immediately dismissed from the armed services (“Don’t tell”). Therefore the only way a service member who disapproves of homosexuality can avoid being dismissed is never to express openly his disapproval of homosexuality. Under a tougher variant of the rule, even maintaining a discrete silence on the subject of homosexuality will not suffice to prove that one is free of bigotry: if a member fails to express approval of his fellow service members who are openly talking about their homosexuality, that will be seen as an expression of disapproval, and will make him liable to immediate discharge.

Such is the coming regime of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Eventually, however, the absurd contradiction and acceptance of bigotry built into this policy,—in which disapproval of homosexuality is formally prohibited, but homophobic individuals are nevertheless allowed to remain in the service so long as they dishonestly keep their bigotry to themselves or conceal it through elaborate artifice—will result in its being overturned. In its place, a thoroughly consistent policy will be adopted in which military authorities will pro-actively question and investigate prospective and enlisted members in order to discover their real views. Once “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been repealed, any service member who is found to disapprove of homosexuality, or to have the intent or disposition to disapprove of homosexuality, even if the disapproval is only expressed in private conversations off-base and during off-duty hours, will be discharged. But the investigative process will not stop with speech or intended speech. Since homophobic thoughts, in and of themselves, can be sensed by homosexuals and make them feel excluded, any service member who is discovered to disapprove of homosexuality in the supposed privacy of his own mind will be discharged. At this point, the U.S. military will have reached the state of perfect inclusion.

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December 25

Dean Ericson writes:

I think you might want to say that this latter is a “worst case scenario” that is logically possible under the new law. It may not happen that way, because of the likely innate, deep resistance to such a radical step. So for some years they may not try to push it that far, but rather just keep turning up the heat incrementally so the frog doesn’t jump out of the pot. So even though that’s what the consistent leftist would desire, practical considerations prevent immediate implementation. But that’s the direction they will try to drive it. That and even further. The poor fools who went along with it think it was only about not being mean to homosexuals. They don’t see the larger context and what waits down at the dead-end of Leftist Drive.

LA replies:

This was difficult to write and I had to keep tweaking it, mainly the last paragraph.

Here’s the problem: under the old system, what was prohibited, as clearly stated in the 1993 law, was homosexual behavior and the expressed intent or disposition to engage in that behavior. Under the new system, what is prohibited is a thought. namely disapproval of homosexual behavior as well as of the system that legitimizes it. A thought can be expressed in speech, or it can be just thought in the mind. Since disapproval of homosexuality is the thing that is prohibited, to make the new regime complete, I needed to say that the thought alone would be enough to get a person discharged from the military.

Yes, this last point seems over the top and practically unlikely. So one could say that my logical development of the rules of the new regime goes to a satiric extreme at the very end. Or it may not be satiric; it may (as you suggest) be turn out to be real.

In any case, the new system, because it targets a thought, not a behavior, must be significantly more intrusive than the old system, just as PC is more intrusive than traditional morality.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 24, 2010 04:02 PM | Send