damnum absque injuria » Third-Party Outings

March 16, 2010

Third-Party Outings

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by Xrlq @ 12:52 pm

Apparently, the real policy on gays in the military is don’t ask, don’t tell, and hope to God some other jerk doesn’t tell, either.

Comments (21)

21 Responses to “Third-Party Outings”

nk Says:
March 17th, 2010 at 10:09 am
I hate homosexuals as much as the next guy, but this was pure malice on the cops’ part.

And, yeah, everybody has their marriage certificate on the kitchen table in plain view through the kitchen window, especially when a same-sex marriage will cost them their career. Phtooy!
Doc Rampage Says:
March 17th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Getting married is a public act. If you marry a person of the same sex, you are publicly professing your sexual preference. There is no way that you can construe this as “don’t tell”.
Xrlq Says:
March 17th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Then someone seriously needs to change the policy retroactively and reinstate her. Most of us understood “don’t tell” to mean “don’t tell anyone in the military,” not “don’t tell anyone in the world.” And the cops who reported this to the Air Force should have been canned, as it’s plain as day they acted out of malice, not out of any legitimate need to tell the AF anything that wasn’t going to affect their investigation, anyway. They were just pissed at her for not helping them rat out her wife. Fire truck them.
Doc Rampage Says:
March 19th, 2010 at 3:31 am
I think it does mean “don’t tell anyone in the military” but when you tell everyone in society then you are telling people in the military since the military are part of society. If the lady had gone on Oprah to profess her love for her partner, would you say that shouldn’t count either because she didn’t specifically go up to a military person and say “I’m gay”?

Since you oppose the policy in general, I don’t think you are being entirely impartial on this particular application.

What the cop did was not very charitable, but if he really did it to pressure a witness, I doubt it was all that big a deal compared to other things that police do to pressure witnesses.
Xrlq Says:
March 19th, 2010 at 6:52 am
Going on national television is a ludicrous analogy. If you do that, then of course people in the military will see it. That’s nothing like quietly getting married on your own time, inviting a few friends and family members who are not in the military, and generally minding your own business until you innocently cross paths with some cops who refuse to mind theirs. Your “public act” argument doesn’t wash, anyway. Sex is about as private as acts get, but if the cops had stumbled across the two having sex, and ratted the innocent partner out to the military over that, she’d have been booted out just the same. Conversely, if the military bought into your theory and started combing through marriage records, domestic partnerships, etc. to look for gays in their ranks, I don’t think anyone except you would seriously argue that THAT doesn’t violate DADT.

Even more ridiculous – and I have to hand it to you for outdoing yourself here – is your implication that my alleged opposition to DADT in general compromises my impartiality while your rabid hatred of gays has no impact whatsoever on yours. I don’t recall blogging much about DADT in the past or taking a position on it one way or the other. I am leaning against the policy now, but it’s precisely because of crap like this. I could live with a DADT policy that really means that. The current policy is a formula for blackmail. Of course you don’t care since you just hate gays. [Isn't it fun being on the receiving end of DR logic for a change?]
nk Says:
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:57 pm
You don’t hurt people just because you can, Doc.
ParatrooperJJ Says:
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:34 am
Actually the cops really had very little choice. Being homosexual in the military is a federal crime. Most police departments require their officers to report any crime they have knowledge of or face disipline. There is also the federal misprison of a felony statute to consider also.
nk Says:
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Being homosexual in the military is not a crime. And not disciplinable, even, if you don’t tell. Telling or asking is not a crime, either. Just something that might get you disciplined, including discharged. Witness that the sergeant got an honorable discharge.
.-= nk´s last blog .. =-.
nk Says:
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:38 pm
These cops sucked. It was like kicking a baby for no purpose other than just plain cruelty.
.-= nk´s last blog .. =-.
ParatrooperJJ Says:
March 23rd, 2010 at 4:38 pm
NK – The crime is called sodomy. It is Article 125 of the UCMJ. I hope you are not suggesting that homosexuals don’t violate this article every time they have sex?
Xrlq Says:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:08 pm
I’m not sure how you can violate an unconstitutional law or why you think cops are obligated to report such non-violations, but that’s neither here nor there. The cops didn’t catch her having sex. They caught her being gay, and they ratted on her for no other purpose but to be nasty.
Doc Rampage Says:
March 24th, 2010 at 7:32 am
I don’t think my inference that you oppose the policy was unreasonable, given what I see as an odd special emphasis that you gave to this story.

As I said, I doubt that this is all that much different from other things that cops do to pressure witnesses. I’m not that familiar with this part of life, but I’ll bet it’s not unusual for police to do things like calling immigration on illegals or informing a collection agency where they can find someone who skipped out on a loan or impounding a car for parking tickets. All of these are borderline cases where a policeman might have let it go under other circumstances but they decided to be hard-ass because a witness wouldn’t cooperate.

I just don’t see a difference between this case and cases like I suggested above.

Also, I notice a certain ambiguity here. Does the military really kick you out just for “being gay”? I assumed that they kick you out for engaging in specific practices and that they view a gay marriage as sufficient evidence that you engage in those practices.

Since the concept of “being gay” is an invention of the late 20th-century and didn’t even exist when the US military formed its policy, I don’t see how that could be the pivotal issue.
Xrlq Says:
March 24th, 2010 at 7:43 am
Why am I not surprised that the same person who made the unreasonable inference about my supposed bias does not believe his own unreasonable inference was in fact unreasonable? I know plenty of unreasonable people, but I can’t say I know anyone who self-describes that way.

As to pressuring witnesses, you’re getting the basic facts wrong. They didn’t try to pressure her to get her to cooperate; they maliciously punished her after the fact. If they had called her and THREATENED to out her IF she didn’t rat on her spouse, that would be rather sleazy, as well, but perhaps defensible as a coercive tactic. They didn’t. They just went and tattled on her to get her fired because their widdle feelings were hurt. And to top it off, their department backed them up. “The system worked.”

Seeing as you believe your own hallucinations about the concept of being gay being an invention of the late 20th century, I’m hardly surprised you also fail to grasp that the military does indeed kick you out for being gay, but that’s exactly what they do. The cops found a marriage certificate, not a video of two lezbos going at it. If the military didn’t kick you out solely for being gay, she’d still be in the military now.
ParatrooperJJ Says:
March 24th, 2010 at 10:57 am
XRLQ – That punitive article has been upheld many times by the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals and also the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. I am not sure why you think it is not constitutional?
Xrlq Says:
March 24th, 2010 at 11:05 am
I don’t see how Lawrence v. Texas allows any other result. The military and the states may operate under different rules, but in the end, they answer to the same Constitution.
Doc Rampage Says:
March 24th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Man, you’ve got a real biting bug up your butt about something, Xrlq. I don’t know why you are taking it out on me.

First, I never said that I approved of what the cops did. I only said that I suspected that such behavior is not unusual. FYI I have actually been in a situation similar to this: I had a serious personal conflict with a lesbian who was in the army, and I never even thought of getting even by outing her. If that is what the cops did, it wasn’t nice but that’s only your interpretation.

Second, I didn’t use Oprah as an “analogy”. That was an extreme case to argue against a principle that you seemed to be using. It’s like asking a woman if she would sleep with you for a million dollars in order to disprove her assertion that she would on principle never sleep with someone for money. After the claim of a principle has been dispensed with, then you can argue over the price.

Third, after you accused me of making a ludicrous analogy, you took my rather mild comment that you were not “being entirely impartial” and riposted by saying that I hate gays. The scale of the accusations here is not comparable. I didn’t even expect you to take offense at what I said and you went completely off the rails.
Xrlq Says:
March 25th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
The reason I’m taking it out on you is that this is not the first time you’ve resorted to the lame tactic of dodging the merits of an argument by accusing the other person of bias, where the only evidence of such supposed bias is the fact that they raised the argument in the first place. Aside from being annoying it adds nothing to the value of the discussion. Stick to the merits of the argument instead.

The problem with your Oprah non-analogy analogy is that this is not about haggling over the price. Anyone who goes on national television knows, or should know, that someone in the military is virtually guaranteed to hear what they say, directly from them. No one who privately tells NON-military friends and family members or files some paperwork in a government office has any such expectations. This is a difference in kind, not merely degree, on the level of saying everyone is suicidal since only few people deliberately end their own lives, but just about everyone has taken an unnecessary and potentially life-threatening risk (as you and I do every time we jump in a car and drive somewhere we didn’t absolutely, positively need to go).

Lastly, I’d like you to either explain your comment that the concept of being gay is a 20th Century invention or admit that it was bunk. Surely you are aware that homosexual acts are described in the Bible, in unflattering terms, and that the Bible is a wee bit older than last century. Are you really suggesting it took humanity two thousand years after the Bible to finally figure out that a small percentage of the population is tempted to commit these abominations while the rest of us are not (and are, if anything, revolted by the idea)?
Doc Rampage Says:
March 26th, 2010 at 1:45 am
I didn’t realize that you would get annoyed at someone politely suggesting that you are not being impartial. But I’ll try to remember not to do it in the future.

Whether the Oprah case is relevant or not depends on the principle being argued. You never explicitly stated what principle you were arguing from but I assumed it was something like “public acts don’t count as ‘telling’ unless they happen on base or in the presence of other military people”.

Finally, I said that the “concept of being gay” is a late invention, not that sodomy is a late invention. What is new is the idea that there are some people who just happen to be born to be lovers of people who are the same sex. Before 1960 or so homosexual sodomy was just another form of sexual perversion like pedophilia or masochism and people were assumed to acquire the taste much like people acquired other perverted tastes.

The idea of a population within a population like a separate race was invented by gay activists so that they could exploit civil-rights to gain special privileges. The “race” of gays was invented during the same time frame as the “race” of handicapped people, the “race” of Hispanics and the “race” of Jews –for much the same reasons.

Other categories tried to get similar privileges but failed. I’m thinking of the “race” of fat people and the “race” of ugly people. Those were groups that were beneath tolerance.
Xrlq Says:
March 27th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
I think politeness (or lack thereof) is best judged by the person on the receiving end, not the person who said or did it. Speaking only for myself, I don’t much appreciate having someone question my motivies or objectivity, and certainly don’t consider it polite. That doesn’t mean such impolite behavior is justified. Sometimes it is, but not in a situation like this one (or the last) where (1) you had no reason to suspect me of bias in the first place and (2) even if I were biased it really wouldn’t matter since we were talking about an issue, and not about me. Whether I am biased / not biased has f— all to do with whether I am right or wrong on the issue. So why bring up bias at all?

The principle I am arguing on Oprah is that there is a difference in kind between telling your secrets to someone who is vs. isn’t in the military. This woman clearly fell into the latter bucket, just like a person who doesn’t get married (not an option for gays and lesbians in most states) but does tell a few trusted friends, and in one case that trust turns out to be misplaced. Hell, even telling NOBODY carries some risk, as the partner herself could have turned on her and ratted her out. But knowingly going on national television is clearly an example of the former; if you tell that many random strangers at once, it’s a statistical certainty that someone in the military will get the message directly from you, with no need for any intervening acts by others.

You’re factually wrong about the concept of being gay not existing until 1960s. The Kinsey Report dates back to 1948, and Freud’s theory of constitutional bisexualism (the only theory consistent with your apparent view that no one “is” gay vs. straight) wasn’t exactly uncontroversial before then. Whether or not one considers homosexuality a “perverted taste” warranting comparisons to pedophilia (an odd choice of words, and an odder comparison still, coming from the same guy who took umbrage in the very last comment over being accused of hating gays), anyone who denies that a small segment of the population is predisposed that way (for one reason or another) while the rest of us are not is not playing with a full deck. Without conceding the validity of your comparison to pedophilia, let’s assume arguendo that it is in fact correct. Do you honestly believe there are no people who, despite not yet having yet committed any pedophilic acts, should not be rightly identified as pedophiles? If so, I hereby nominate you for Pope; he doesn’t seem to get that, either.
Doc Rampage Says:
March 28th, 2010 at 7:10 am
“Politely” as I used it referred to the form of the phrasing, it was not intended as a subtle dig to suggest that you were being oversensitive. In fact, I think that you are just being normally sensitive. Somehow I had formed an opinion of you that you were, like me, relatively insensitive to comments like that (as long as they are offered in a polite form). Apparently I have been annoying you for some time without realizing it. I’m sorry for that.

As to the concept of being gay, I’m not going to argue about dates (partly because I only have a vague idea of them) except to say that I wasn’t talking about when the idea was first floated, but when it became a common idea in the US.

I don’t understand your comment about Freud. Are you suggesting that no one could deny that “gay” is a separate classification without a formal psychological theory?

As to “perverted”, two comments: first, I was describing historical views, not (exactly) my views, and second, there is no connection between believing that sodomy is a perversion and hating people who engage in it.

The word “perverted” is like “retarded” in that it can be used dispassionately and descriptively but is still viewed as an insult because no one wants others talking of them like that, but the objective meaning of the word does not contain a judgment of right or wrong (although it does contain a judgment of natural or unnatural –but that is in the old sense of the word, not the modern usage).

Your question about pedophilia is an interesting one. I’d have to say that you have to define “pedophile” first. Three likely definitions come to mind: (1) one who has been convicted of pedophilia, (2) one who has committed pedophilia, whether or not he has been convicted, (3) one who desires to commit pedophilia. Pick your definition and the answer falls out.

I am not lawyer and you are, so I’m trying not to get in over my head here, but I don’t think that there were any laws that made feelings or desires illegal before the trend of “hate crimes”. If there were, one would think that hate crimes would be less controversial.
Xrlq Says:
March 28th, 2010 at 9:23 am
My point about Freud was actually the opposite of what you suggest. If, as you claim, no one thought anyone was constitutionally gay or straight before Freud’s theory came out, then the reaction to his theory when it came out should have been little more than a collective yawn, as it would have merely confirmed what everyone already thought they knew. But there was controversy surrounding that theory. Plenty of it. And the reason it was controversial is because then, as now, most of us understood that some people are indeed gay while the rest of us are decidedly not.

Returning to your original point, it strains credulity to suggest that at any time that there’s been a U.S. military, the U.S. military would have been incapable of coming up with a rule to exclude those inclined or predisposed to engage in homosexual acts, whether or not they have actually gone out and done so. This is not to be confused with having a law that made such feelings or desires illegal. AFAIK, wanting to commit homosexual sodomy has never been a crime, but it has always been a disqualifying factor for serving in the military. Nor, for that matter, is it a crime to want to commit pedophilia, only to actually do it. Nevertheless, it would be foolhardy for churches, schools and the Boy Scouts to hire constitutional pedophiles on the theory that everyone who hasn’t actually committed such acts (or been caught, anyway) is no more likely to commit them in the future than anyone else. I don’t think the military should have comparable concerns about ordinary gays serving in their ranks, but the current policy (or certainly the one that preceded DADT) reflects a longstanding assumption that it should.

Hate crimes are a very different issue, but there too, the mere feeling or desire does not itself constitute a crime, at least not in the U.S. Here, it’s only a hate crime if you commit an actual crime, and the sentence is enhanced because the motive was hate against a particular group that the perp thought the victim belonged to (whether the victim actually belonged to that group is irrelevant). These laws are controversial, sure, but the more general idea of considering the motive in determining the sentence is not. Murdering a complete stranger for financial gain has always been punished more severely than murdering the guy who murdered a family member, for example.

March 16, 2010

Third-Party Outings

21 Responses to “Third-Party Outings”

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