Openly gay people in U.S. military? So what? I have no objections

By David McElroy · September 21, 2011

When I was in college, I had a good friend who was struggling with his sexuality. He and I had gone to church together for years, and he eventually started having more conversations with me about the morality of homosexuality. He never said he was struggling with his own identity, but it was obvious.

After college, he joined the Army and became a Green Beret, which was a shock to all of us who had known him as an artistic and laid back guy. He was in the Army for a couple of enlistments and did quite well.

He also “came out” as gay while he was in the Army. A number of the other soldiers knew it and some proportion of them were gay, too. Everybody knew it, apparently. Regardless how you feel about whether sexual orientation is a matter of choice or not, I can’t figure out why it has anything to do with whether someone is capable of taking a job that requires him to kill people or fulfill other specific jobs to support people who kill people. It’s just not relevant to the job.

As of this week, it’s finally legal for openly gay people to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Some people think it’s great and others are worried about potential problems. I think a soldier’s sexuality is irrelevant to his job performance, so it will have no effect on the performance of the military.

There are a lot of things that I object to in other people’s behavior, but that doesn’t mean they’re automatically unqualified to do a job. There’s no legal or moral justification for the policy that’s been in place, whether you believe homosexuality is acceptable or not. Changing this policy was the right thing to do.

Personally, I wouldn’t suggest that anyone join the military, because the U.S. military has become a killing tool of powerful elites who want their way around the world. With that said, though, if you’re gay, you can now sign up to go be killed for no reason just as openly as a straight guy can.

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The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

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