Don't ask

Wednesday, February 03, 2010



Hi All,



Since 9/11 I have been going to a Middle East chat room, ostensibly to learn more about the culture there and I learned a lot of unexpected stuff. For one thing I had to change my nick name since I was using jenemn which is my and my wife’s initials and many thought that was a female name. Now in chat rooms there are lots of young guys looking for girls so they were always hitting on me so I changed my nick to jack and that stopped but then gay guys would contact me. For those of you who do not frequent chat rooms, the way you know this is that a person comes into the room and sends you a message of asl. By this they are asking age, sex and location. When you see that, many times it is some guy on the prowl, gay or otherwise. On a number of occasions when the issue of gays in the military was in the news, I would ask these guys if they were gay and if they were I would ask them if showering with other men would be sexually exciting for them and most answered that it would be. That gave me some concern about changing the don’t ask don’t tell rule but I wanted to investigate further and discovered the following. While I think that the love between two men is a wonderful thing and the world would be a better place if we had more of that, when it comes to the intimacy of this type of relationship I get a little uncomfortable. I am not alone in this matter and I can prove it. Everyday on the soaps and most nights in prime time TV you can see a man and women in bed and most of us don’t think much of it. Now let us see such a scene with two men scantily clothed, in bed, rubbing each other and open mouth kissing and you can bet that most people would find that not only uncomfortable but bordering on disgusting. It is my contention that we have come along way in understanding homosexuality but we still have a way to go before the general public is completely at ease.

There is a good argument for dispensing with the don’t ask rule as many militaries around the world including England and Australia have no such rule and they seem to have adjusted. There is no reason why we cannot also adjust but I believe they should move gradually in this direction. The current situation of just sticking our heads in the sand is not a viable long term solution but changing should be accomplished with sensitivity to the problem that many in the military would face. Many of the talking heads on TV would not care much for taking a group shower knowing that there were gay people in the room but they are strongly oppose the don’t ask policy. It is always easy to take the high road when the consequences only affect others.

I believe we will get rid of don’t ask but it will not be for several years and when that time comes the old policy will fade into the past and we will all move on.



Jack or John whatever