Don’t Ask Don’t Towel

It is probably not too surprising that so-called “public intellectuals” have descended from academic canyons to call for the repeal of the U. S. military’s ban on homosexuality in the service. “Military experts today expressed concern about Marine Commandant General James Conway’s remarks that he would build new quarters to separate gay and straight troops,” Laura McGinnis of Renna Communications reported on March 26, 2010. “Many said his plans could cause the very problems he seeks to prevent.”

“I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it. And to me that means we have to build BEQs [bachelor enlisted quarters] and have single rooms” Gen. Conway, who previously expressed resistance to lifting the ban on openly gay service, said in an interview with Military.com.

Many of the experts McGinnis refers to have academic berths. “Richard H. Kohn, a prominent military historian who was faculty at the Army and National War Colleges, and was Chief of Air Force History for the U.S. Air Force, said that ‘segregating Marines, as Gen. Conway envisions, might undermine the very cohesion he and other opponents of change say they are trying to protect,’”  McGinnis writes. “Kohn said that ‘the proper response to a question on the issue is to defer any statement until the Ham-Johnson group reports,’ referring to the year-long Pentagon Working Group.”

“Kohn is currently Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.” Kohn, of course, is not a voice in the academic wilderness.

Air Force Captain Diane Mazur, Legal Co-Director at The Palm Center, a think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a law professor at University of Florida Levin College of Law, blasted Conway’s plans. “Unfortunately, any discussion of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ seems to lead some officers to forget their professional and constitutional obligations as military officers,” Mazur said. “We live under a system of civilian control of the military in which we make decisions based on fact and law, not on the personal objections of individual officers.”

“This is insubordination, plain and simple.”

Aaron Belkin, Director of the Palm Center, added that he would expect “significant Congressional opposition” to any plan that implied a separate-but-equal standard.

Meanwhile, even under the ban, problems stemming from the presence of the alternatively lifestyled are hardly nonexistent. “In the meantime, the story of recently-resigned Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) is reminding members of Congress why it would be unwise to recruit professed homosexuals and bisexuals for our military,” Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness states.

“Former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Massa reportedly had a history of inappropriate sexual approaches against male subordinates while he was in the Navy.” He supposedly liked to give what he called “Massa Massages.”

“But in conversations yesterday and today with some of Massa’s Navy shipmates, it became clear that the behavior toward his subordinates that got Massa into trouble in Congress is part of pattern that dates to his time in the Navy,” Joshua Green wrote in The Atlantic on March 10, 2010. “According to Peter Clarke, a Navy shipmate, Massa was notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.