ROTC Marching Its Way Back to Harvard
http://www.sfbaytimes.com/?sec=article&article_id=12815
By Rev. Irene Monroe
Published: April 29, 2010
For decades the Reserve Officers' Training Corps( ROTC) was an
unwelcome sight on Ivy League college campuses, like Harvard
University, because of its ban on lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) servicemembers.
But in February of this year when the nation's top two Defense
officials, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advocated for a repeal of the
1993 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT)" policy, universities like Brown,
Columbia and Harvard, to name a few, are allowing ROTC to march its
way back on campus.
For example, while Harvard's ROTCs participate in the program at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), they are commissioned as
officers in Harvard Yard upon graduation.
But many Harvard LGBTQ students are not pleased by the sight of ROTC
on campus, and feel that the school should wait in having the program
until DADT is actually repealed.
And there is good reason for their distrust. Obama has come up empty-
handed on too many campaign promises to us. And especially this one.
For example, soon after Obama's inauguration in 2009 the LGBTQ
community waited anxiously to hear that steps were being made to
repeal DADT. But on June 8 of that year when the Supreme Court
refused to review the Pentagon policy that prohibits LGBTQ
servicemembers to serve openly in the military, Obama's people added
salt to the wounds of our LGBTQ servicemembers by stating in court
papers that the ruling on DADT was correct because of the military's
legitimate concern of LGBTQ servicemembers endangering "unit
cohesion"苔 concept totally debunked by a 2002 study.
In March of this year Gen. David Petraeus testified before the Senate
Armed Services Committee stating that DADT should be repealed but
expressed, nonetheless, his concerned about the policy's effects on
recruitment and "unit cohesion."
The argument about "unit cohesion" is deliberately designed to ban
LGBTQ servicemembers from combat. The privacy rationale states that
all service members have the right to maintain at least partial
control over the exposure of their bodies and intimate bodily
functions. In other words, heterosexual men deserve the right to
control who sees their naked bodies. According to the privacy
rationale argument, the "homosexual gaze" in same-sex nudity does
more than disrupt "unit cohesion." Its supposedly predatory nature
expresses sexual yearning and desires for unwilling subjects that not
only violates the civil rights of heterosexuals, but it also causes
untoward psychological and emotional trauma to them.
However, the 2002 study titled " A Modest Proposal: Privacy as a
Flawed Rationale for the Exclusion of Gays and Lesbians from the U.S.
Military," states that banning LGBTQ servicemembers would not
preserve the privacy of its heterosexual servicemembers, but instead
it would actually undermine heterosexual privacy because of its
systematic invasion to maintain it. And, in order to maintain
heterosexual privacy military inspectors would not only inquire about
the sexual behaviors of its servicemembers, but it would also inquire
into the sexual behaviors of their spouses, partners, friends and relatives.
But according to this study, heterosexuals already shower with known
LGBTQ servicemembers, and very few heterosexuals are extremely
uncomfortable with these men.
Although Obama promised the LGBTQ community during his administration
that DADT will eventually be repealed, he has set no definite
timeline to do so. Instead he has suggested the Pentagon complete its
study first as the best course of action to overturn DADT, which is
due in early December.
However, many of us LGBTQ Americans feel Obama's administration is
once again stalling on taking a deliberate action against the policy.
For more than a decade now U.S. military recruiters have demanded
their presence back on college campuses. The 1996 Solomon Amendment
requires college campuses to offer full recruiting access to the
military or else risk losing federal grants.
With Harvard receiving a sizable chunk of its annual budget from the
federal government- approximately 15% of its yearly budget in federal
grants go primarily to the medical school and the school of public
health for medical and scientific research- the university has found
itself between a rock and a hard place.
While it is not surprising that military recruiters and ROTC are
finding their way back onto campuses, it is surprising that, in the
midst of a war that needs every able body who wants to fight, the
enlisting of our American patriots continues to include a debate
about sexual orientation. Military readiness is not a heterosexual
calling. And even Charles Moskos, the chief architect of "DADT," has
said that the policy should be suspended.
If the Pentagon believes after it completes its study this December
that servicemembers who are LBGTQ endanger "unit cohesion" it will
only be maintaining a policy of segregation, an argument eerily
reminiscent of the one the military used before it was forced to
racially integrate its ranks.
However, the greatest disappointment to our LGBTQ servicemembers
will not be that ROTCs are marching their way back onto college
campuses with DADT upheld. But rather our government took no action
on our behalf.
.
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