Stop before my head explodes

The idea that 400,000 active-duty service men and women were sent an opinion survey by their superiors probing their feelings about gays and lesbians is not only screamingly misguided and lame but also illustrates everything wrong with the Obama style.

Did the Pentagon really pay some polling firm $4 million to ask people things like, ‘Have you been assigned to share bath facilities with an open bay shower that is also used by a service member you believed to be homosexual?’ ‘Have you shared a room, berth or field tent with a service member you believed to be homosexual?’

This surreal bullshit belongs on The Colbert Report or better yet, reassigned to the Ministry of Funny Walks. I have a question for the scientific pollsters to add: ‘In the last six months, what sexual acts have you engaged in with your legal spouse? Do you think your platoon buddies would (a) approve (b) disapprove (c) strongly disapprove or (d) cheer wildly and high-five each other?’

Other amazed commentators have noted that Harry Truman did NOT poll the grunts to see whether they would like to share facilities with ‘Negroes’ when he desegregated the armed forces by dictatorial fiat in 1948. Given the large percentage of Jesus-blowing backwoods southern white cracker motherfuckers serving at that time, you can bet that the responses would not have been encouraging.

No, Truman did not gently ask the troops if they would get upset to see a curly black pubic hair on the soap. He told them what was going to happen whether they liked it or not.

Nor did Truman waste his time trying to get racist blowhards in Congress like Richard Russell of Georgia to split the difference. The segregationist Russell, for whom one of the big marbly office buildings on Capitol Hill is named, introduced a measure immediately after Truman’s diktat to allow draftees to choose whether or not they wanted to serve in segregated military units—just the kind of ‘compromise’ our current leaders love.

Truman told Russell to put it up his ass, and Congress voted it down. But just wait until the new ‘compromise’ on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell finally staggers out of the White House and see if it doesn’t include something similarly grotesque.

‘We’re not playing games here, we’re trying to figure out what the attitudes of our force are, what the potential problems are with repeal’, a defensive-sounding Pentagon spokesman is quoted as saying in the WaPo article linked above. Exactly, and exactly why this approach stinks.

When dealing with principles like equality before the law and non-discrimination, you don’t ask people to change their intimate thoughts or personal feelings about individuals or behaviors that are alien to them. You don’t ask them to go through some wrenching act of conscience BEFORE establishing fairness—you establish fairness, and then let them get with the program in their own sweet time.

It’s the difference between asking for tolerance and demanding respect: you legislate respect and forget about tolerance because it’s basically bullshit. If somebody doesn’t fancy cocksucking or snatch-gobbling, that’s his private business. Treat people the same, and if you hate your co-workers, go home and stick pins in kewpie dolls. Nobody cares.

‘We need this survey and we need people to participate in this survey to get a sense of the attitudes of the force’, said the Pentagonoid. No, we don’t need this pathetic pandering to prejudice; we need a commander-in-chief who can act like one and who will tell the troops and their hard-on officers what he expects them to do and how far across the room he’ll kick their ass if they don’t.