For
decades the Reserve Officers� Training Corps( ROTC) was an unwelcome
sight on Ivy League college campuses, like Harvard
University, because of its ban on lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) servicemembers.
But in February of this year,
when the nation�s top two Defense officials, Defense Secretary,
Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, advocated for a repeal of the 1993 �Don�t Ask, Don�t Tell
(DADT)� policy, universities like Brown, Columbia and Harvard, to
name a few, are allowing ROTC to march its way back on campus.
For example, while Harvard�s
ROTCs participate in the program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), they are commissioned as officers in Harvard Yard upon graduation.
But many Harvard LGBTQ students
are not pleased by the sight of ROTC on campus, and feel that the
school should wait in having the program until DADT is actually
repealed.
And there is good reason for
their distrust. Obama has come up empty - handed on too many campaign
promises to us. And especially this one.
For example, soon after Obama�s
inauguration in 2009 the LGBTQ community waited anxiously to hear
that steps were being made to repeal DADT. But on June 8 of that
year, when the Supreme Court refused to review the Pentagon policy
that prohibits LGBTQ servicemembers to serve openly in the military,
Obama�s people added salt to the wounds of our LGBTQ servicemembers
by stating in court papers that the ruling on DADT was correct because
of the military�s legitimate concern of LGBTQ servicemembers endangering
�unit cohesion� - a concept totally debunked by a 2002 study.
In March of this year Gen. David
Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee stating
that DADT should be repealed but expressed, nonetheless, his concerned
about the policy�s effects on recruitment and �unit cohesion.�
The
argument about �unit cohesion� is deliberately designed to ban LGBTQ
servicemembers from combat. The privacy rationale states that all
service members have the right to maintain at least partial control
over the exposure of their bodies and intimate bodily functions.
In other words, heterosexual men deserve the right to control who
sees their naked bodies. According to the privacy rationale argument,
the �homosexual gaze� in same-sex nudity does more than disrupt
�unit cohesion.� Its supposedly predatory nature expresses sexual
yearning and desires for unwilling subjects that not only violates
the civil rights of heterosexuals, but it also causes untoward psychological
and emotional trauma to them.
However, the 2002 study titled,
�A Modest Proposal: Privacy as a Flawed Rationale for the Exclusion
of Gays and Lesbians from the U.S. Military,� states that banning
LGBTQ servicemembers would not preserve the privacy of its heterosexual
servicemembers, but instead it would actually undermine heterosexual
privacy because of its systematic invasion to maintain it. And,
in order to maintain heterosexual privacy, military inspectors would
not only inquire about the sexual behaviors of its servicemembers,
but would also inquire into the sexual behaviors of their spouses,
partners, friends and relatives.
But according to this study,
heterosexuals already shower with known LGBTQ servicemembers, and
very few heterosexuals are extremely uncomfortable with these men.
Although Obama promised the
LGBTQ community during his administration that DADT will eventually
be repealed, he has set no definite timeline to do so. Instead he
has suggested the Pentagon complete its study first as the best
course of action to overturn DADT, which is due in early December.
However, many of us LGBTQ Americans feel Obama�s administration
is once again stalling on taking a deliberate action against the
policy.
For
more than a decade now, U.S. military recruiters have demanded their presence
back on college campuses. The 1996 Solomon Amendment requires college
campuses to offer full recruiting access to the military or else
risk losing federal grants.
With Harvard receiving a sizable
chunk of its annual budget from the federal government- approximately
15% of its yearly budget in federal grants go primarily to the medical
school and the school of public health for medical and scientific
research- the university has found itself between a rock and a hard
place.
While it is not surprising that
military recruiters and ROTC are finding their way back onto campuses,
it is surprising that, in the midst of a war that needs every able
body who wants to fight, the enlisting of our American patriots
continues to include a debate about sexual orientation. Military
readiness is not a heterosexual calling. And even Charles Moskos,
the chief architect of �DADT,� has said that the policy should be
suspended.
If the Pentagon believes, after
it completes its study this December, that servicemembers who are
LBGTQ endanger �unit cohesion� it will only be maintaining a policy
of segregation, an argument eerily reminiscent of the one the military
used before it was forced to racially integrate its ranks.
However, the greatest disappointment
to our LGBTQ servicemembers will not be that ROTCs are marching
their way back onto college campuses with DADT upheld. But rather
our government took no action on our behalf.
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist,
theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian
and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School
of Religion. A
native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College
and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served
as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard
Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently
named to MSNBC�s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible
Prayers for Not�So�Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector
of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is
irenemonroe.com.
Click here
to contact the Rev. Monroe.
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