Against Gays in the Military

I wrote about gays in the military last May. See, "Obama's Stunning Failure on Gays in the Military." I don't write about it often, but I oppose "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Some of my opinions have been influenced by academic research, especially, Aaron Belkin's, "A Modest Proposal: Privacy as a Flawed Rationale for the Exclusion of Gays and Lesbians from the U.S. Military." Also interesting has been some of the milblog arguments against the ban on open service. I'm also not convinced current policy has been effective. That said, Mackubin Thomas Owens makes the case against open integration at today's Wall Street Journal. See, "The Case Against Gays in the Military" (via Memeorandum):

Winning the nation's wars is the military's functional imperative. Indeed, it is the only reason for a liberal society to maintain a military organization. War is terror. War is confusion. War is characterized by chance, uncertainty and friction. The military's ethos constitutes an evolutionary response to these factors—an attempt to minimize their impact.

Accordingly, the military stresses such martial virtues as courage, both physical and moral, a sense of honor and duty, discipline, a professional code of conduct, and loyalty. It places a premium on such factors as unit cohesion and morale. The glue of the military ethos is what the Greeks called philia—friendship, comradeship or brotherly love. Philia, the bond among disparate individuals who have nothing in common but facing death and misery together, is the source of the unit cohesion that most research has shown to be critical to battlefield success.

Philia depends on fairness and the absence of favoritism. Favoritism and double standards are deadly to philia and its associated phenomena—cohesion, morale and discipline—are absolutely critical to the success of a military organization.

The presence of open homosexuals in the close confines of ships or military units opens the possibility that eros—which unlike philia is sexual, and therefore individual and exclusive—will be unleashed into the environment. Eros manifests itself as sexual competition, protectiveness and favoritism, all of which undermine the nonsexual bonding essential to unit cohesion, good order, discipline and morale.

See also, the Los Angeles Times, "Joint Chiefs Chair Says Gays and Lesbians Should Serve Openly in the Military."

P.S. I hate to say this, but I'm finding myself on the same side of this issue as the demonic Attackerman, God help me (although he doesn't help his case by mocking Mackubin Thomas Owens).