14 January 2005 @ 2:53PM >> An e-mail in response to yesterday’s post:

Your post: “Pentagon’s ouster of valuable translators continues” makes me prouder of our American military. It is good to know that someone is still concerned about morals.

If utilizing the skills of gay citizens prevents an attack in which other American citizens would be killed, then in what alternate reality can we pronounce it “moral” to boot gays out of the military?

We know that there’s a tremendous backlog of documents waiting to be analyzed because we don’t have enough translators fluent in Arabic and Farsi. We also know that, on the morning of September 11th, 2001, there were documents not yet translated that contained clues about the attacks. Now, I’m not saying that September 11th would have been prevented if openly-gay translators were allowed to serve, but it certainly doesn’t help to artificially constrain the number of people who can take part in the defense of our nation.

How many documents sitting today in some translator’s overflowing inbox contain information that could be used to prevent a future terrorist attack? Of course, we’ll never know until those documents get translated. Let’s just hope we don’t find out after an attack, when it’ll be too late.

I’m not a military expert, and I’m willing to accept that some concessions might need to be made in order to integrate openly-gay people into the military. There are issues of housing and the sharing of facilities that might complicate matters, just as there are with women. I would imagine that it’d be distracting for a gay man to be surrounded by a barracks-full bunch of half-naked men, just as I might have a little difficulty doing my job if I were surrounded by a horde of half-naked women. Those issues need to be resolved, but I don’t think they’re insurmountable, and I certainly don’t think they should be used as excuses to refuse the service being offered by good Americans who want to help us win a war.

Let’s face it: gay people are going to be gay whether they’re in the military or not. If they’re willing to lend a hand in the defense of America, then we might as well take them up on it.

14 January 2005 >> Deroy Murdock has a revealing column on a poor choice of priorities in the U.S. military:

Name the greater risk to national security: patriotic military translators who happen to be homosexual or anti-American Islamofascist terrorists who happen to be homicidal. If you picked the latter, thanks for putting U.S. safety first. Alas, the Pentagon disagrees.

According to new Defense Department data, between fiscal years 1998 and 2003, 20 Arabic- and six Farsi-language experts were booted from the military under President Bill Clinton’s 1993 “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy. These GIs trained at the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. Had they graduated — assuming 40-hour workweeks and two-week vacations — they could have dedicated 52,000 man-hours annually to interrogate Arab-speaking bomb builders, interpret intercepted enemy communications or transmit reassuring words to bewildered Baghdad residents.

Preparation for these vital activities ends when a dedicated warrior is found to be gay. Under “don’t ask,” if that GI’s homosexuality becomes evident, he must stop conjugating verbs and head home.

It seems to me that we shouldn’t be turning away any capable person who’s willing to serve our country, especially now. While integrating gay personnel may pose unique challenges to the military, we should remember that the military was at the forefront of racial integration. Segregation in the military ended years before it did in society as a whole, and it was a success.

The future of our nation depends upon the effectiveness of our armed services. Why artificially limit the pool of talent available to our military?