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.

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.

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.

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.

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)?

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.

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.

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.