We've Had This Debate Before

Note: I originally intended to send the below as an LTE to my local paper. Having second thoughts about that, but posting it here seems like a good idear.

The debate has resumed over allowing openly homosexual individuals to serve in the U.S. armed forces. It is a hotly contested issue based, it seems to me, more on emotion and prejudice than logic. Listening to the arguments from both sides, it occurs to me that one, crucial point is never raised; namely, that we have had this debate before.

When I was a youngster, the debate was whether to allow women to serve on a par with men - on ships, in combat, etc. The argument as I recall it boiled down to this: "You can't have men and women serving together in an integrated unit. They'll spend all their time trying to lay one another and no work will get done. It will be the end of unit cohesion and force efficiency." Today, the public doesn't think twice about the gender integrated armed services.

We have had this debate before. In 1948, Pres. Harry Truman ordered the racial integration of the Army, sparking years of resentment and debate. The argument boiled down to this: "You can't have whites and blacks serving together. You can't expect white men to take orders from black officers. You can't expect white men to work shoulder to shoulder with black men, to trust them in the way necessary in combat. It will be the end of unit cohesion and force efficiency." Today, the public accepts the racially integrated armed forces as a natural, unremarkable part of our society.

I am both visually and physically disabled. As such, I will never be expected to serve in the military. With advances in medical, military, and personal technology, however, in the future it may become possible for some disabled persons to serve. If so, we'll have this debate yet again. "You can't ask normal people to serve alongside the disabled," the argument will run. "How can you depend on the guy next to you when he's blind? How can you depend on the girl next to you when she's mentally retarded? It will be the end of unit cohesion and force efficiency." The debate will rage, the integration will go on; and, by the time the children of its opponents are old enough to enlist, the sight of a blind soldier or crippled airman will be as normal to them as the sight of black, white, Hispanic, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, male, or female service members.

The American public would, I think, agree with the proposition that denying an otherwise qualified person the opportunity to serve in the military on the basis of race/ethnicity or gender is both morally repugnant and legally untenable. Similarly, denying a person the opportunity to serve based on sexual orientation has nothing to do with certain people's religious convictions or certain people's repugnance or open-mindedness. It is a matter of civil rights.

As a disabled person, I stand in solidarity with all those whose rights are denied because of who and what they are; because of a characteristic that "the majority" finds unacceptable, be that having the wrong set of genitalia, the wrong color skin, or the wrong sexual preference. If an individual member of the military disgraces her/his uniform, then remove that member. But, presuming that any given group, as a group, is necessarily unfit to serve surely runs counter to all we stand for as Americans. Moreover, as I have briefly shown, history teaches us that such presumptions do not stand up against practical experience.

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