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

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.