low recruitment levels and bitter soldiers stuck in Iraq may prompt revisit of gays in the military

[netmouse]

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/print?id=673844

I wonder if this is a good time to press to re-open this issue?

Comments

[brendand.livejournal.com]

Probably. As Bush wants to kill the gays... might as well increase the likeliness by sending them to war...

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

It's really more insidious than anyone is talking about. It's the first step toward a general state of Intolerance - rather than the general state of Acceptance I was brought up to embrace.

This whole game starts by finding a sub-group that people are actually willing to discriminate against. The fundamentalist Christians (and others, but mostly them) poked at a variety of sub-groups, and found that they could be most successful in targeting homosexuals. So they are. They are doing what they can to get homosexuals ostracized from work, from governmental service, from being eligible to be foster parents, from everywhere. They're getting the government to be on their side, which is the most appalling step of all.

Once they are successful here, they will branch out.

I expect that the group after this one will be Undocumented Aliens. Single parents will come in here somewhere, and also people (such as Welfare and Social Security recipients) who are reliant on the government for subsistence. After that, it will likely be Islamic Terrorists -and it will be as hard to prove that you can be Islamic and Not A Terrorist as it was in England thirty years ago to prove that you can be Irish and not part of the IRA. (And every bit as unpleasant.)

I fully expect to be a part of the Third Wave - when they target anyone who doesn't espouse Judeo-Christian Values - whatever the heck they are; ask any three people and you get three answers that are actually incompatible with what they're actually practicing.

Yes, it makes no sense. They're eliminating intelligent, capable people based on a trait that the individuals themselves have little control over. And they have tools to accomplish their ends that the Gestapo could only dream of.

Groups get empowered through exclusion. I expect that the Politics Of Exclusion are just getting started.

[nicegeek.livejournal.com]

I take a little less conspiratorial view on the events. The judgementalist side of Christianity (by which I mean those who feel they must do the judging themselves, instead of leaving it up to Christ) have a religious basis for their discrimination against homosexuals. That's not true for undocumented aliens. For that group, the primary advocates for persecution are the protectionists and the labor unions, and they tend to be opposed by the free-market advocates.

I think that there's a good chance for major political realignments within the next few years. The Republican party may schism between those with religious principles and those with free-market principles. The religious side may adopt a protectionist and pro-entitlement stance to gain support from blue-collar religious Democrats. The free-market side may, in turn, seek support from civil rights oriented Democrats.

The result of this could be that five years from now, the two major parties are no longer:

Social Conservatives and Fiscal Conservatives (Republicans)
vs.
Social Liberals and Fiscal Liberals (Democrats)

but rather:

Social Conservatives and Fiscal Liberals
vs.
Fiscal Conservatives and Social Liberals

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out...

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on the political alignments.

I actually hope I'm wrong about the creeping Exclusionism I perceive around me!!! Nevertheless, that's what I'm seeing.