Gays Right to Serve in the Military
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Joseph Steffan, in Honor Bound: A Gay Naval Midshipman Fights to Serve His Country, argues convincingly that he and every gay man or woman has the right to serve his country in the military. There is no question that legally Steffan is correct in his argument. This reader wholeheartedly supports Steffan in his moral and legal fight to exercise that right. Any law---civilian or military---which discriminates against gays should be abolished, period. Steffan's personal commitment to that struggle wins this reader's total support. However, this piece will question the overall philosophy of the author on two counts. First, that philosophy is weak with contradictions between his plea for moral and humane treatment of gays by individuals and institutions, and the utterly immoral and inhumane nature of the profession he sought to pursue as a member of the military. That is, the military exists to kill, to maim, to destroy human beings and property. The author, who longs to be a part of that murderous profession, ignores its destructive essence and focuses instead on the "honor" of Annapolis and service in the military. Second, he argues that he sought at Annapolis and in the military to develop his own individual talents, when in fact the military is designed to first and foremost strip individuals of their individuality and create killing machines who obey orders without question. Steffan is conveniently naive in minimizing the essence of the career he seeks in the military. In fa
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n integral part. He is willing to die to ensure that his and other Americans' freedom to be themselves remains intact. That means, however, that he is also willing to kill human beings who his political and military superiors tell him must be killed in order to protect such freedom for Americans. This problem is particularly acute when we consider that Steffan sought to be a Navy officer, a leader in a branch of the service which drops bombs of massive destruction on people who may or may not be innocent, or civilians, or young and gay like Steffan himself, young men and women who like Steffan are merely following orders from superiors who see themselves as protectors of that same freedom for the people in their own countries. Steffan's ignorance is especially great in this regard when we consider that he sought to serve on submarines which were capable of delivering nuclear weapons designed to destroy entire cities. Nowhere in the book does Steffan show any awareness of this fundamental contradiction between what he wants for himself and what he is willing to do in order to achieve it. When he does briefly mention the massive, anonymous murder of which he seeks to be a part, he does so with a shocking off-handedness:
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Approximate Word count = 1350
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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