The military is a huge socialization factory for working class youth. They go
in, learn to take orders, get used and abused and spit out, usually for the
worse. If black or latino soldiers were in struggle to resist some aspect of
racist power, we'd support their struggle, even if they were still full talk of
"defending their country."
The gay and lesbian servicemembers are fighting the imperialist army, unaided
by a clear understanding of the society they are in or the role the army plays,
or the ideology that is being drummed into them every day. The armed forces
knows it can't get rid of every gay in the military. They have settled to make
examples of those members who do something as courageous as coming out as a
political act or simply for posting a personals ad. I hope revolutionaries
EARN the right to have their views known by being advocates of the oppressed in
their struggles as they pursue them.
The military today is "voluntary". But with a generation of negative
economic growth for the working class, the military is an option many
youth, gay and lesbian included, opt for. Antigay bias in the military serves,
among other things, to make straight women submit sexually to unwanted sexual
advances under explicit threat to denounce them as lesbians. It is government
enforcement of sexual norms as a means of social control.
Adam
SF
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