Friday, April 24, 2009

Former Navy officer talks about gays in military

Thanks to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars for pointing us to this post from The Crossed Pond.  A former Navy officer discussing his experiences of discharging gay servicemen and servicewomen under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policies.  He finds himself convinced that discrimination against gays in the armed forces has got to go, with which I agree.  Apart from that, I find this section interesting:
"The next one was more disturbing. He was a hard working deck hand, a book worm, a loner, and a fundamentalist Christian. He made the mistake of leaving a moderately erotic drawing of a partially nude male on his rack in his assigned group berthing compartment. Someone took it, reported it, officers questioned him, and then we kicked him out. But along the way, I learned about self loathing. This young man believed he was demon-haunted and devil-tempted. He could resist these urges so long as we stayed in our home port, where he could attend nightly services at his small church, and pray for strength with the handful of other worshippers. But when we left home port, spending weeks at sea where he had no access to his support group, he grew weak, and would seek anonymous sex in the usual hang outs at the first port call. He hated himself. He comes to mind often; I wonder if he ever came to terms with his sexuality, if he still exists in his self imposed purgatory, or if he killed himself. My questions and doubts grew."
An example of the damaging effects of a religion that teaches you to hate yourself because of your sexual orientation.  A reminder that devout believers can be gay, too.  An illustration of how gays can be driven to destructive sexual behavior ("...would seek anonymous sex...") by the fear and self-hatred imposed by their religion.

And I find myself dumbfounded by the fact that he was turned in over having a drawing of a partially nude male in his bunk area.  What kind of bigoted asshole turns in a fellow sailor over something as harmless as that?  So, the end result is that the "hardworking deck hand" is discharged, while the creep that turned him in stays to make more sailor's lives miserable.

No comments:

Post a Comment