"DADT" Linked to Poor Performance

I'd like to point out that the decrease in performance ability has absolutely nothing to do with concealing one's sexual orientation or any other personal tidbit. The decrease in performance ability has absolutely everything to do with being preoccupied with the requirement of concealing a personal quirk (not that homosexuality is a quirk, of course) whatever it may be. This article is wantonly misleading; it's as farcical an argument as saying God exists because the Bible is a book.

We should not be blabbing to world we are gay or having sinful womanly sodomy. Since I have come out, I have retained my manhood. I supported President Bush and DADT. You can not blame people for being against being gay when these radicals always push for acceptance.

I am so sick of the whole DADT thing. Gays that join the military know precisely what the deal is going into it. Why work for a dysfunctional corporation that loathes your type and that legally discriminates against you? Having tried thrice to join the service and learning each time what a cluster-mess of inept idiocy even just the recruitment process was, I would not put my life in the hands of other people whose soul virtue is the ability to tolerate deleterious BS and follow the nonsensical edicts and orders of other morons in a groupthink death march. I have come to realize that the uncompromised price and state of my soul is infinitely more valuable than serving my country, VA benefits and the supposed glory of making a tight bed and erroneously feeling one needs to man up through conforming and walking in a straight line.

When I was in the service back in the early 80's, if you were gay, you had to say you were straight to join, while straight guys were saying they were gay to get out. Go figure? I never met so many gay men and women until I joined the service. These were all career minded individuals and I was proud to serve because of this. There were even several marriges between a gay man and a lesbian in order to to both stay under cover and collect the benifits they wouldn't be able to otherwise.

This is such an idiotic discussion. Most countries outside of the US require military service. Sexual orientation isn't even an issue. Gay, straight or bi-sexual individuals don't hide their sexuality in many of the world's best military organizations. Why? Because it absolutely has a horrible impact on the service. Sexual orientation isn't a non-issue. It absolutely impacts all of us. If you can't talk about your personal life people feel resentful towards you. This impacts your performance. The whole construct is about hiding. Put any people in a tense situation and add in youth, physical prowess and hormones and you will have indiscretion and inappropriate behavior. But enforcing DADT doesn't work. I've spoken with countless military people - and evidence of sexual impropriety include male on male rape is as old as organized military. Worrying about 'homos' in the shower and in the barracks is just stupid. People need to learn to behave themselves.

So come out of the closet already. If you can't take hiding, stop hiding. Seems basic to me.

It seems the only people who think DADT has value are the high brass who forced Clinton to accept it in the mid-1990s. The average soldier doesn't much care who his foxhole buddy sleeps with as long as the guy can competently and successfully watch his back in combat. In addition, the loss of gay services people seems to have included a large majority of the Arabic and Farsi speakers in the military. So in addition to DADT causing stress that lowers performance, the military is throwing success away to begin with by getting rid of exactly the skills that are most needed at this moment. All this, many thousands of American youth dead or wounded, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, all so the top brass don't have to admit that they are bigoted and that they were WRONG!! If gross incompetence were grounds for a charge of treason, perhaps we would be able to get a lot of that brass out of the band!

I've been in the Army since 1998. I don't support DADT, but I also don't know how I feel about having a bunch of homo's in my company. I know I'm going to get a lot of crap for saying that, but I can live with it. Bottom line is this: Going into the military is a free choice. If you don't like the rules and the way things are, don't join.

"Don't ask, don't tell",....alive and well in the Obama administration.

Yeah....like tell us something we don't know. It's pretty much a widely known thing that youth who are in the closet can be negatively affected by the homophobic slurs---which is why we make such a great deal about coming out (as we should). So how would adults in the military be any different? I so want to tell the world to wake up and smell the coffee, cause we're not in Kansas anymore. And it isn't an "agenda"--it simply is!