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Louis Proyect wrote:
David, your analysis of the US military is moralistic. In the 1960s, the
SWP was right to allow some of its members to be drafted where they
could raise antiwar ideas. If refusing to go into the army was elevated
into some kind of principle, the movement would have never reached GI's.
The point is that there have always been gay people in the military.
They join for the same reason that people like the Fort Jackson GI's
against the War joined, because they had no other options. It is an
elementary democratic right for a gay person not to be harassed or
thrown out of the military because they are gay. You really need to
reread (or read) Lenin's What is to be Done.
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I don't disagree with this rather obvious and low-level argument.
Although I think hoping that same-sexers living openly in the military
is going to somehow lead to organizing AGAINST imperialism from within
the military is dreaming with your eyes open. Hell, I haven't even heard
of GIs in Iraq or Afghanistan fragging their officers. There's nothing
even close to the Fort Jackson Eight (used to be Nine, but one turned
out to be an agent) involved in the patriotic efforts by gays to get
into the military and repeal DADT. You are conflating two different
issues. And your position coincides with that of the gay Republicans,
who, in their brief (redolent of repugnant patriotism, as indeed the
whole campaign to repeal DADT is), focus on how repeal with help U.S.
imperialism--which it will, as I said.
The fact that same-sexers (who are already in the military in the
many thousands, some open with some of their fellows, including
superiors) face discrimination insofar as they cannot (yet) serve
imperialism openly is obvious. That is unjust. But a leftist ought to go
beyond making this democratic rights issue the centerpiece. We should
explain what is wrong with wanting to join the military, to participate
in its criminal enterprise. Your attempt to make a parallel with
draftees during the sixties doesn't strike me as convincing. It is
ridiculous to assume that same-sexers join the military "because they
[have] no other options." They have other options. Like not joining.
David
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