Don't ask don't tell -- a stupid and dangerous policy for America
20100204 at 09:00 
clockwise from left: Anthony Blunt, Alan Turing, Roy Cohn
Inspired by irritability, impatience and disgust, this is a bald attempt to re-frame the debate (such as it is.) Excuse me Senator McCain but you seem to forget all of history’s lessons as completely as you forget what your own position was recently. I am in favor of a senility test for the Senate, frankly.
As far a the tired old canard “unit cohesion would suffer” goes, I refer you to the Israeli compulsory military service and to World War II. Those serving in the former are quite cohesive (thank you very much) and the latter had plenty of closeted military personnel serving with honor.
Let’s move on to Britain where one of the greatest minds in Mathematics and cryptology, Alan Turing, died much too young as a result of ignorant and horrific treatment by the British government. It should be noted that last year an official apology was issued by the British government concerning the treatment of Mr. Turing. Next to him in the “bad” column I’ll place Anthony Blunt, who you might say protested the injustices against him by becoming one of the most effective and damaging spies against his own government ever known:
Of the Cambridge Five, as they have come to be known, only Kim Philby wasn’t a homosexual. It is rumored that Blunt recruited those four Apostles for Stalin. It is also rumored that Blunt used others’ homosexuality to blackmail even more hapless souls into the service of Mother Russia. Being homosexual was quite a different matter back in the staid 1930s. [source: Master Soviet Spy Sir Anthony Blunt’s Memoirs Released]
In this country we find in the history books the likes of Roy Cohn — played so effectively by Al Pacino in the HBO adaptation of “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”
“Unit cohesion” I hear people chant. I laugh at their pathetic stupidity.
As far as lack of imagination goes, I ask those people to imagine where a language expert recently fired from the intelligence services might find employment — especially the Arab language experts. Thankfully these young people are much too patriotic to consider working for America’s enemies — but why on earth would you treat your own citizens so terribly for serving their own country?
It’s just another bomb waiting to go off: the imbalanced, introverted genius who only needs the condemnation of family, community and government to push him over the edge. But go right ahead, keep trying to light the fuse. I’m sure someone will lend you the lucky match in time.
As obvious as it may be to some, for others the fact must be underlined: it’s the stigma and homophobia here that create the security risk, not the individual’s private life.
