Hello Darkness! The Official Blog of Helen Keller

Since the Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) policy has been up for recent review, I've had the misfortune of reading an awful lot of opposition to it. Essentially, the arguments against it run along very similar lines:

If we have a bunch of queermosoldiers sashaying around the front lines or being totally faboo in the mess hall, God-fearing straight soldiers are going to be so disgusted and packing their virgin assholes with cotton that the Army is going to be decimated in one fell swoop by Taliban/Iraqi insurgents that don't appreciate a good vagina either.

It's easily the gayest response to the whole issue at hand.

Each and every time I read one of those editorials, or God help me Fox News, all I keep hearing through the belchy noise is that the Army should continue to protect bigotry because soldiers will follow any order except one that involves fighting beside somebody who doesn't put their dick in the same hole they do. Somehow, in that one, brief moment, the Army magically becomes a democracy where Privates' concerns about privates are no longer private.

Private Daniel: Sergeant, I will no longer go on patrol with Private Bruno over there. He insists on shaving everything on himself, bemoaning the lack of a good scone-shop and listening to his iPod too loud. If I hear Rah-Rah-ah-ah-ah, roma-ah-ah-ah, ga-ga, ooh-la-la I will snap and throw myself on a roadside bomb.

Sergeant Wilson: War is hell.

I've never been in the Army, but from those with whom I've talked, the whole idea of basic training is to strip you of your civilian thoughts, break you down into nothing and then fill your empty body with thoughts of gloriously serving the Army machine. They do this by recognizing two distinct organizing principles at play in human social dynamics.

Task cohesion and social cohesion. Social cohesion is the clique-forming tribal principle where people take great pains to recognize that their Sky-Fairy is the only one capable of taking them to After-Death Eternal PlayLand and all others are dangerously deluding themselves and should probably be killed to make Earth time safer. Unity, conformity and in-group/out-group dynamics are the watchwords of social cohesion.

Task cohesion is the principle whereby people get shit done despite their differences. When people sandbag the Red River because "Holy Shit, it's flooding...again!", they do so for a common purpose; keeping ugly Manitoba from becoming swampy ugly Manitoba. Provided all the people are kept unified along that line, it doesn't matter if you're working next to a minority/woman/homosexual/Muslim/newly divorced and hot-as-fucking-hell Scarlett Johansson, you're not distracted in the least by the odd decision that she decided to go braless in a tight, white t-shirt to stop all this water. Just her constant up-and-down motion to slop that next sandbag in place. Yeah, you like throwing sandbags around, don'tcha? Yeah, that's a naughty bag of sand. Teach it, teach it a lesson for being so filthy and out of place.

Uh....

Task cohesion is the principle the Army prefers. It keeps city-slickers and farm-boys focused on the task of blasting Taliban fighters into small chunks of "Quit fighting back already". Social cohesion is the driving force of the plot for A Few Good Men.

And the focus on task cohesion hasn't been a failed policy anyway. Canada and Britain long ago integrated gays openly into the military and our Armed Forces didn't collapse into a Nathan Lane musical.

Besides, the folly of keeping DADT in place should be eminently recognizable by the fact that the same arguments were used to once bar blacks and women from the Army.

So what has kept DADT in place all this time? I think it's simple. The religious right in the United States has been fighting a losing social war against progressiveness and all fronts. Abortions, evolution, civil-unions, , secular government policy, gambling, drinking, not burning witches for having their periods on full-moons and causing sweeping cattle deaths are all acceptable. Homosexual bigotry is the one thing they have left and they are tenaciously clinging to it.

They oppose gay marriage, gay adoption and gay military service. They accuse the gays of being a monolithic body that just wants to trample poor Christians. They piss hot rage when people like me accuse them of being a monolithic body.

DADT and other bigotry shouldn't be protected anymore, not by anybody. Life is too damn short to worry how consenting adults you never have and never will meet make themselves cum. Shit, worrying about how to make yourself cum should waaay override stranger's orgasms.

The Senate apparently voted to begin repealing DADT. Merry Christmas to that.