The Gay Warrior

Sitting at Jack's coffee shop in the west village an op-ed in the Times caught my eye, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Change' by Merrill A. McPeak, aka grandpa McPeak.

It wasn't long before my blood was boiling. I'll let you read it for yourself (click here, McPeak). But it was his belief that gay men could not be "warriors" that infuriated me, and is flatly ludicrous.

Also ludicrous, is this idea that gay and straight men cannot bond. They can, and they are bonding. McPeak is clearly out of touch with the world as it is now. I admit, that I too am out of touch when it comes to knowing and understanding fully how gay and straight young men in their teens and 20's are bonding and working together. The fact is, they are! Wouldn't it be great to see video of those conversations at schools and universities across the country?

Once I calmed down, I was quite thankful for Mr. McPeak's piece - it caused me to think of the gay man as a warrior. A gay man as fighter. A gay man honorably, heroically, fighting alongside his fellow straight soldiers. A gay man fighting for his country, and able to speak out about his experience. Those are the stories that many people don't want told. For it will be proof that a gay man is every bit a man as a straight man. Then what?

I found this passage in a novel recently, and what struck me was how it could have been written today - yet it was written in 1952 by Christopher Isherwood.

"Of course, I could have gotten out of this whole thing. I could have told the psychiatrist, when I had my medical examination. All you have to do is tell them you're queer, and you're out. I couldn't do that, though. Because what they're claiming is that us queers are unfit for their beautiful pure Army and Navy - when they ought to be glad to have us. The girly ones make wonderful pharmacist's mates, and the rest are just as good fighting men as anybody else."

- The World In The Evening, Christopher Isherwood

My response to this whole debate is "Go see Yank!" It's the greatest thing I've ever seen on stage. Yes, that's right, greatest! It's the best $65 bucks I've ever spent. If you live in the city, waste no time - get your tickets, its been extended for 2 more weeks. The Zellnick brothers have created a gift really, for all gay men. I was honored to experience it. One of the things that makes it so powerful is knowing that it represents a rarely told reality. This is how you can buy tickets, click on YANK!

I also encourage you to get a copy of Coming Out Under Fire by Allan Berube. Michael Musto turned me on to it in his Village Voice column this week. "A wonderfully informative collection of reminiscences by gay WWII vets, homosexual pairings in the wartime military went on in every situation and reflected every imaginable attitude toward sex, love, war, and soldiering; the risks gay men braved were as harrowing as the punishment they faced if caught." Thanks Michael! See his column here, Musto.

Lastly I leave you with Nathaniel Frank's response in the Times to Merrill A. McPeak's op-ed.

Gen. Merrill A. McPeak tries to shift the focus of the gay troops debate to its weaker talking points, while ignoring the wealth of actual evidence about openly gay service. Shockingly, he claims that others have “avoided a discussion of unit cohesion,” while he himself fails to address a single one of the dozens of studies that show no link between openly gay service and impaired cohesion.

“I believe repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ will weaken the warrior culture,” he writes, offering no greater basis for this belief than the fact that 17 years ago he and other military brass “concluded that allowing open homosexuality in the ranks would probably damage the cohesiveness of our combat units.”

Yet as an article published by the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff concludes, “there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly.” And the best evidence that openly gay service works is that a majority of troops say they already believe there are gays in their units.

This is not about unit cohesion, but about the personal intolerance of a generation of military officers who refuse to accept that the world has changed, and so has their beloved institution.

Nathaniel Frank

Brooklyn, March 5, 2010

The writer is a senior research fellow with the Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America.”