What struck me about Officers Brian Page, Bryan Miller and Richard Brown’s column in The Sun last week was their open criticism of the segregated military. And alongside it, their “personal opinion” about “don’t ask, don’t tell:”
“If you are asking us to come out and say that the law is wrong, then our response to you is that as Army officers we follow the laws that are given to us. As citizens, we look to see where our congressman stands on the issue and make it a consideration on election day.”
Of course the response circumvents the question: how does capitulating to an unjust law out of a sense of duty — despite the personal misgivings that the officers are so reluctant to state — bear on the question of whether it is unjust? In their capacity as Army officers, it is perhaps antithetical to the military’s ethic of blind obedience to say the law is wrong (which prompts the question: in what sense is ROTC creating leaders?). But by the same token, if the dictum is not to comment, but to obey, the officers should refrain from commending or criticizing the racial segregation of the military.
The discrepancy is not a contradiction; rather, it evinces the logic underlying how we talk about homosexuality in the military, how the debate is framed in such a way as to keep homophobia alive within the protective shell of “controversy.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell”— and by extension, homosexuality — is an “issue,” a “consideration.” It is something about which people have “personal opinions” that are circumscribed in a larger “debate.” Like religion, it falls under the category of personal preference.
Debates are seen as good, the fundamental mechanism by which democracy operates. They have a general form: a social norm is questioned, debated and replaced with another. In the interest of comity and tolerance — values most often associated with liberals but exploited by conservatives as well — we entertain different ideas and “agree to disagree.”
The drawback is that, under the banner of debate, certain groups legitimize prejudice and promote discrimination. By labeling “don’t ask, don’t tell” or “gay marriage” a controversy, one allows that being anti-gay marriage or against openly gay military service is a tenable position, one to which a rational person may accede upon consideration.
But the discussion about “don’t ask, don’t tell” is fundamentally different from a debate about the economic stimulus package or energy policy, whose discussion is in the interest of the public good. Homophobia is not a measured and considered response to some political question, but a self-perpetuating and irrational prejudice. By calling it an “issue” for which “we look to see where our congressman stands,” we create a forum in which homophobic attitudes can be advanced. Notice that we invent a political or social problem that the “debate” is supposed to address: “unit cohesion” in the military, the “breakdown of the family,” etc. But also notice that we do not entertain a debate about barring homophobes from military service in the interest of “unit cohesion,” which shows how the invented problem is not really the point at all.
Segregation and slavery were once also “debates,” as were women’s suffrage and prohibition. But there is typically some point at which the debate ends, when there is a collective recognition that the very existence of the debate is the problem. We no longer countenance the personal opinion that blacks are not human or that women are unfit to hold public office, nor should we have in the first place.
A similar thing has happened with the “debate” about evolution. In order to legitimize creationism as a scientific theory, religious conservatives have invented a debate around it. Now that it is categorized as such, creationists get their say in the classroom, at least in the form of disclaimer stickers on textbooks. But any scientist will tell you that creationism is not among the theories that biologists investigate, as it is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of scientific inquiry.
In short, I am calling the talk surrounding “don’t ask, don’t tell” an illegitimate debate. It is not a debatable topic whether blacks are human or not. And it is not a debatable topic whether the law should treat gays and lesbians equitably. This position might seem absolutist, but unlike the opposing camp, I am not asking for homophobes to be prohibited from marrying or having children. When someone thinks the government should deny me these things — or refuses to say that they do not think so, as do Brian Page, Bryan Miller and Richard Brown — I find it hard to “agree to disagree”: them’s fightin’ words.
Officers Brian Page, Bryan Miller and Richard Brown are in a difficult position: as Army officers, the law binds them. But there is no prohibition on expressing the opinion, as a citizen, that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is wrong. Rather than do this, they tuck the issue away as one among many — Social Security, Medicare, immigration — that you take to the voting booth, another checkmark on a questionnaire.
Gabriel Arana is a graduate student in Linguistics. He can be contacted at garana@cornellsun.com [1]. The Red Line appears alternate Thursdays.
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[1] mailto:garana@cornellsun.com