On the Issues
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“Homosexuals should relinquish their right to protect our country along with their right to earn a living wage for the able completion of such service. I mean, whenever I think of them doing the ‘do’, I get a funny feeling down deep, below the waist, and then my morals start to burn and ache.”
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“General Pace’s comments are outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our armed forces,” the advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said in a statement on its Web site.
“I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace was quoted as saying in the newspaper interview. “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.”
“As an individual, I would not want (acceptance of gay behavior) to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else’s wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,” he said.
In a newspaper interview Monday, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had likened homosexuality to adultery and said the military should not condone it by allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.
Of those who said they were certain that a member of their unit was gay or lesbian, two-thirds did not believe it hurt morale, according to the poll published in December.
–from the Associated Press
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9 Responses to “On the Issues”
AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edits the anthology series, Bettering American Poetry, and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
AMY KING 
March 13th, 2007 at 5:17 pm eAn AOL News poll showed nearly 240,000 votes as of 1:00pm EDT. The margin is two to one in favor of SUPPORT for General Pace’s comments regarding gays in the military.
How do you feel about Pace’s comments?
Agree 65% (more than 156,000)
Disagree 33%
Not sure 3%
Total Votes: 238,800
I applaud General Peter Pace for taking the correct stand on this matter. His comments are right on target. There is NO REASON for him to apologize to anyone. His personal beliefs are his own and NO ONE need apologize for their personal beliefs. While I agree that he should be loving and respectful in his statements and (more importantly) actions, being forced to accept and celebrate the choice of homosexual behavior is NOT something anyone should be confronted with — military or civilian.
These gay advocacy groups need to sit down and shut up! There is NOTHING “outrageous” or “insensitive” in what General Pace said in the interview. I listened to part of his comments. He was soft-spoken and respectful, but also firm in his resolve. Pace answered one question with a very straightforward and truthful answer, “The US Military’s mission fundamentally rests on the trust, confidence, cooperation amongst its members, and the homosexual lifestyle does not comport with that kind of trust and confidence and therefore is not supported within the US military. I’ll leave it at that.”
Homosexuality *is* an immoral act. It is NOT natural, normal or moral. The lifestyle choice is rife with promiscuity, predatorship and infidelity — all matters that point to trust, confidence and cooperation. General Pace should be applauded for standing his ground and speaking the truth.
I, personally, plan to be active in the fight against these homosexual advocacy groups as they seek to villainize General Pace. Here’s hoping you will join the fight as well. It’s high time conservatives (especially Christians) stand up for our beliefs and convictions.
March 13th, 2007 at 5:49 pm eAmerican Taliban
The epistemology is infantile.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:16 pm eAnd Charlie, you fully believe in imposing your belief system on every other person in the world, no? Until we eventually bow down to your god, your will, and your image. We shall all become little conservative Charlie robots, where no one executes any unapproved behaviors, and no one shall diverge from your cookie cutter replica of a “human”, no?
This country was founded on the principles that no one shall force their belief system on anyone else, especially in the name of any god. You see, we can’t all be the same, Charlie, and in this country, there’re bound to be people who behave as we would not. In some cases, we might not even like the way they behave. However, the guidelines for controlling behavior (& establishing laws and policy) are pretty clear: as long as your behaviors don’t infringe on my permitted behaviors or hurt others, you are free to act and think differently than me.
What gets me is that just because you don’t like what homosexuals do, even when it’s not done unto you (& even when you try to authenticate what you don’t like by labelling it your “moral values”), you think you have the right to banish such behavior **basically on the premise that you don’t like it.** So the fuck what? I don’t like the way you eat your cereal or fuck the person you fuck; I don’t think you do it well or properly, but that’s not my bag or concern to dig into and fix — because your actions are not about me, Charlie. And the hurried, tasteless way you eat your cereal or fuck someone doesn’t infringe on my life or hurt me in any way. Get it? Why do you feel the need to control homosexuality, Charlie? Why is homosexuality *your* cause, Charlie? Why is it about you, Charlie? Unless it actually is about you and what you’re trying to beat out of yourself …
In my brief history on this planet, I’ve found it’s always the advocates of this type of “moralistic” behavior that are actually repressed homosexuals. And there’s not much that’s more dangerous than a repressed homosexual with a cause that’s personal-turned-public …
So when does your crusade to save everyone begin?
March 13th, 2007 at 8:18 pm eOh and good thing AOL voters told us ‘what for’, Charlie — not like they’re speaking for actual enlisted men and women there, Charlie. Did you happen to catch the Associated Press poll that actually queries the viewpoints of enlisted military folks?
March 13th, 2007 at 8:23 pm eOne more thing, since I let your comment appear here — I just re-read it and really enjoy the way you characterize General Pace as “soft-spoken” and “firm”. That’s so sweet of you to notice! And very telling–are you sure you’re not in love?
But really, what’s with this list of adjectives, “The lifestyle choice is rife with promiscuity, predatorship and infidelity — all matters that point to trust, confidence and cooperation.”? Heterosexuals can certainly be those things, just as gay couples can be and, as often, are not. Those are the hazards of any relationship, regardless of its orientation, Charlie. To tell yourself that it’s just gays who behave promiscuously is to live in a very naive world of “denial will get me the everyone’s-just-like-me vision I seek”.
But the logic here re: “matters that point to trust, confidence, and cooperation”? What in the world are you trying to conclude? Or did you just throw those words in because you heard Pace use them and thought they sounded pretty and strong?
March 13th, 2007 at 8:48 pm eI just re-read Pace’s statement (& I promise, I’m leaving the computer after this), “We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior.” Since when does the military prosecute anyone for adultery??
March 13th, 2007 at 10:12 pm emy “morals start to ache and burn” when i hear that military personnel with injuries that make them unfit for service are being reclassified as fit, without real physical examinations, and shipped off to iraq. this is the case right now, at fort benning, and possibly other military bases as well:
http://www.salon.com/news/2007/03/11/fort_benning/.
as for sexuality, if everyone in the armed forces who has had premarital, promiscuous, adulterous, homosexual, or kinky sex (all of which i see as well within the range of “normal” possibilities, in terms of what most folks are likely to do [and should be left alone to decide about] in their lives) — not to mention everyone who has had incestuous, non-consensual, or pedophiliac sex (which are where i draw the line, because they are by definition about huge imbalances of power and destroying people’s relationships to intimacy) — if *all those folks* were kicked out of the armed forces, there wouldn’t be *anyone* left to fight.
hmmm…..!!!
peace,
evie
March 13th, 2007 at 10:31 pm eCharlie, I checked out your blog. Thanks so much! It gave me a new understanding of what it means to be a conservative Christian in the 21st century — an eye-opening lesson on how to read the New Testament in the light of the New Materialism. I had forgotten that Jesus had a wishlist of products he wanted, complete with pricetags. The table at the Last Supper must have been full of techie goodies!
March 14th, 2007 at 5:04 pm eOh geez! This Charlie dude just cut and pasted his comment from what he wrote on his blog.
You’ve never been to this blog before, Charlie. I suspect you’re just watching Technorati and posting the same nonsense on every blog you find. (Hell, I’m not sure why I’m even writing this since you probably won’t be back to read anyone’s response to you.)
Last I checked, nearly half of heterosexual marriages end in divorce. So, I’m not getting where you get this idea that heterosexual relationships exist in some la la land of perfection and morality. Wasn’t it your buddy Newt Gringrich that just confessed to having an affair while actively trying to impeach Clinton FOR THE SAME DAMN THING? But that’s ok because he’s heterosexual, a Republican, and he confessed, right? Where’s your outrage at a potential Presidential candidate who has admitted to infidelity?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Hypocrisy abounds.