I am cutting/pasting an essay I wrote for English class. Some background on me, I am a Staff Sergeant, active duty Army, Infantry 11B3B40, I have been deployed to Iraq for 15 months, this has been an interesting conversation to far. I believe that one thing that has been touched on but not thoroughly explored in this thread is the fact that EO and sexual harassment policies will still be in effect.
Any member of the military (gay or straight) that makes an unwanted sexual advance can be reprimanded and have rank, pay, and privileges taken away (even prolonged staring can be considered sexual harassment). I think that with this legislation being passed homosexuals will be walking on eggshells, I really doubt that there will be any serious incidents. (Certainly no more than there are in the heterosexual community) and no as far as problems with bunking/showering I think that they need to be put in perspective; besides basic training I might have showered with a group in an open area maybe once or twice during my military career.
The bigots said similar comments about allowing blacks in the military, and also about allowing women. Welcome to the modern world, we need everything that is willing to do the job and able to do the job to be allowed to do the job. (I have attached a copy of my ERB so you can verify everything in my statement. Feel free to read the essay below I would love to get some feedback.
For the Defense of the Few:
An Essay defending the rights of Gay Americans
CSS101
I would like to open my argument by doing two things; first, I would like to address directly how absurd this discussion is in the first place. I am of course referring to the "debate" on Gay Marriage and Gay Rights. First of all, we live in the United States, a supposed "free" society, so how is this even a debatable issue? If two American Citizens live a certain lifestyle that is not causing harm to themselves or anybody else, who has the right to stop them? I have never heard of homosexuals being anything but the victims in violent crimes.
It is not like there are homosexual gangs running around committing murders, dealing drugs, or creating homosexual mafias or cartels, there are no homosexual terrorist groups, and there is virtually no violence in their movement, they just want to be treated equally and not harassed, and that is something that they have an absolute right to as citizens of this country. That being said, I would like to look at the historical context and timeframe in which we are choosing to address this issue: Our country has been at war for ten years, our borders are virtually wide open and drugs are pouring through, our schools are failing, the divorce rate for straight couples is fifty percent, and our economy is in shambles; why then are we so concerned about Gay Marriage when we have our entire country coming down around us?
Common sense dictates that we should come together and focus on how we are all in this together as American Citizens instead of turning on a small minority group. And just to be clear, let us define exactly the issue that we are talking about here; we are talking about two consenting adults who are United States citizens engaging in bedroom activity and coming into both a physical and legal union together that would be recognized by their government and which would be given all of the same benefits that heterosexual couples would enjoy. The issue is first and foremost tainted by a false perception, a perception that has been created and absolutely abused by the media, and since a majority of gay bashers have never met a homosexual, the view that the media presents is the only view they have of the homosexual community.
The issue is also a matter of science, in the sense that as long as the opposition can convince people that it is a life choice instead of something that is evolutionarily hard wired, they can turn it into a moral issue. After we have explored those two points, I am going to ask the religious right to hold a mirror up to its face, and actually put into practice the words of the teacher they profess to follow. I would also like to note at this time that I hold a passionate and completely biased view of the subject, and would love to get a response to this writing in the class forum from students.
The Media likes to paint extreme caricatures of all groups, cultures, and subcultures to achieve ratings, shamelessly telling whatever story or airing whatever show will consistently grab headlines and keep people tuned in to their channel so that they can enjoy the most viewers, an increase in the number of viewers leads to more money from sponsors, more advertisements, and increased revenue from commercial clips. Keeping that motive in mind, we can see why they put the most extreme and freaky images in the spotlight in order to add shock value and draw an audience.
Want some examples? If you want to see the poorest depiction of white people, or of human beings in general, watch Jerry Springer, you will see the absolute most disgusting and depraved â??white trashâ?? imaginable. So does that fringe group accurately represent the majority of whites? No, of course not, but if you were, for the sake of this illustration, an African man watching this show and only this show on TV, and if you had never met a white person or seen any show where they were depicted in a positive light, your lack of perspective and real world experience would probably lead you to believe that all whites are that way.
A second example is the show COPS, where over 90% of the criminals shown are black. Does that accurately represent the majority of blacks? No, of course not, As of July 1, 2008, the estimated population of black residents in the United States is 41.1 million, since you have that information available to you; you can accurately use critical thinking to come to the conclusion that what you are seeing on TV is only a small portion of that culture, but what if you did not have that information? I would like to again point out, that the Media is using any and all techniques available to them to sensationalize every single issue in order to draw more viewers.
Let us together apply the same common sense to a TV station showing a news clip of a story involving homosexuals, you will most likely see a drag queen dressed in leather bondage gear whipping the naked ass of another man who is bending over and wearing chaps. Does that accurately represent the majority of homosexuals? No, of course it does not, it represents a small subculture, the tragedy is that historically the media has not shown enough â??normalâ?? gays and as a consequence weak minded or mentally lazy people just take what they see on TV as reality instead of going out into the world and seeing for themselves.
This brings us to the issue of homosexuality being a rare but natural occurrence. There is actually a wide range of Mammals in which homosexual behavior has been observed, well over two hundred species according to several researchers and multiple sources. This brings us to the million dollar question; can we draw the conclusion from these facts that these animals made the choice to be gay? Of course not, the idea is absolutely ludicrous, animals do not have any sense of moral code, they do not develop fetishes and they are not perverts, they simply follow their instincts, and in some rare cases those instincts lead to homosexuality.
That being established let us walk down that trail of thought a bit further. Since the animals that were observed in these studies are mammals, and humans are mammals, how could one logically hold the position that homosexuality is a choice, a sin, or a perversion? Let us apply common sense one last time by thinking about the hostile attitude that this country has had in the past towards its homosexual citizens, keeping in mind that in a majority of areas, gays are denied equal rights, harassed, provoked, and insulted simply for being homosexual.
Why on earth, if it was a choice, would anybody walk down that road? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Why would an individual choose to feel or live a certain way if that way more often than not led to pain and isolation from the majority of their community?
It is ironic how the religious right is going to such great lengths to persecute this minority group as if they were some huge threat, when the religious right has caused more wars, bloodshed, and atrocities than nearly any other group in history. It is just completely ludicrous and it blows my mind that it is even being discussed and it points directly to the hypocrisy that the church is so filled with. Answer me honestly Christians; as far as priorities go, do you think Jesus might be more concerned about the wars, famine, and disasters happening all over this planet than he would be with two men or two women choosing share a life together?
Get your priorities straight, it just makes me absolutely sick that the religious right has the nerve to go on about love and peace and can attend their big mega churches once a week, and what do you think the sermon is going to be about? I mean considering everything going on in the world it should probably be about coming up with a collective, practical, real-world plan so that we can find ways to feed the poor, stop all of these wars, and get housing and clothing for the homeless right? But more often than not, the big issues mentioned above are ignored, and the religious people that actually pay anything more than lip service to those issues are few and far between.
However, religious people who feel that gays do not deserve to be treated as equal citizens are a dime a dozen. Not to mention their constant references to their bible that they use more often than not as a blunt object to bash gays with instead of reading and applying the content to their lives. (I would draw your attention to Matthew 7:5) All I am saying is that if you really believe that your god exists and that he is who he says he is, you can probably safely assume that he wants you to be going about more important work than oppressing homosexuals. What makes them unequal to you? Please tell me even one thing that makes homosexuals unequal to you as American Citizens, and give me one reason why your rights are more important than theirs.
You probably do not even know one gay person, and if you met one and this issue actually became something you could relate to on a personal level, you would probably be very surprised and reconsider your stance. And if you still would hold your position of hate, do you think that you have the nerve to look another human being in the eye and tell him or her that they are less of a person than you? That even though they are a citizen of this country they should not have the same inalienable rights as you do? That they cannot pursue their happiness, even though it is harming no-one?
You probably would not have the stomach to do that if you really got honest with yourself. I do not speak out of ignorance, I was raised in a Christian home and was a practicing Christian for a majority of my life, and I consider my parents loving people, but the church is so far out of touch with this issue that it is very disturbing.
I would like to thank the reader at this point for taking the time to read my paper and consider my views. I hope that at the very least I have given you food for thought and created some critical thinking for you on this issue. I am fully aware of how heated I sound when discussing this issue, and there are many reasons for it. Being a soldier, I have seen firsthand in Iraq the consequences of intolerance; I have seen the bodies of people that were shot and killed for belonging to the wrong religious group, I have read the newspaper articles about women in the Middle East being stoned for not doing, saying, or wearing the right thing.
I have seen the absolute extreme of intolerance, and the evil that it causes; I believe that we need to be thankful in America for what we do have, while we have our share of problems, we also have a lot to be proud of as citizens of this country. Let us all work together to create a better America where everybody is given an equal chance and where bigotry is unheard of. Or, at the very least, let us at least agree as a country that right now, right this very second in our history, we have bigger problems to worry about than Jim and Joe getting married.
References:
African Americans by the Numbers Information Please® Database, © 2009 Pearson Education,
List of Animals Displaying Homosexual Behavior Wikipedia 2010, Retrieved fromâ?¦ www.wikipedia.com
Religious Wars Just Say No To Religion Retrieved fromâ?¦ http://justsaynotoreligion.com/religious-wars/
