The bigots sure are
getting desperate:
A California congressman strongly opposed to allowing gays to serve openly in the military is drafting legislation to protect the rights of straight service members who object to the presence of gays.
The draft bill prepared by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who served as a Marine Corps officer before being elected to Congress, does not prevent repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy by the end of September, but it would require the services to “ensure that a member of the Armed Forces under their jurisdiction is not pressured to approve of another person’s sexual conduct if that sexual conduct is contrary to the personal principles of the member.”
Essentially, this would mean that military people have to accept the presence of gays in the military but they would not have to like it, said an aide familiar with the legislation.
This is getting really pathetic. Since they've lost the battle to keep gays out of the military, bigots are really grasping at straws to find some way to keep something on the books that says gay people totally suck. And with the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell about to take affect, I guess the best they can come up with is this never-gonna-pass law to protect straight people from having to like gay people. Because this is, apparently, a major threat facing our military.
“We’ve heard the training is really pushing the line for people who believe homosexuality is wrong on religious and personal grounds,” said an aide, who asked not to be identified. “It is a legitimate concern, under the circumstances, with the services working on disciplinary policies for people who don’t agree with this decision.”
Yes, it's a legitimate concern, this whole not-openly-hating-gays thing. Everyone knows the whole military might very well collapse on itself if bigots are no longer allowed to openly practice their bigotry while serving their country. Sure, we beat the Nazis in World War II, found Saddam Hussein in a hole in the ground, killed bin Laden in his den o' porn, but obviously, all of that was only possible because we discriminated against gays who wanted to serve their country. There's just no way our military will be able to function without a healthy dose of homophobia.
Thank god Hunter's got the bigots' back.