Integrity News

Rep. Ike Skelton: National Security Challenges

Rep. Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, is Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Today he released a statement listing his concerns/priorities for the next administration regarding national security. I found one of his challenges to be particularly interesting:

We Must Recruit and Retain a High-Quality Force

Our forces are the most highly-trained and educated in the world. The dedication and professionalism of those who serve are unsurpassed. However, there are serious challenges that must be faced if we are to maintain the quality of the force we have today.

While the cost for the services to recruit and retain its people has skyrocketed from $4.6 billion in Fiscal Year 2005 to $7.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2007, funding is not the only issue that will impact future recruitment and retention. The propensity of Americans to serve in uniform is significantly declining. While some decline can be attributable to the current conflicts, the number of young men and women exposed to the military experience is extremely small.

Additionally, the greatest future challenge we will face is finding qualified men and women who are willing to serve. Currently, only two of every ten young Americans are qualified, both mentally and physically. We must also ensure that our professional military schools, in particular our war colleges, are the finest in the world.

Well, Chairman Skelton, I can think of at least one thing you can do to help recruit the best qualified individuals: repeal Don’t ask, Don’t tell. Some may think that gay men and lesbians are not the best qualified simply because of their sexual orientation, but I’ve got more than a few awards on my wall that may make you think differently.

¶ Posted 19 August 2008 † Pepe § Don't ask, Don't tell § Congress ‡ Comments (0)

Friendship & Sexual Orientation

I was raised in the Christian faith and I am familiar with the teachings and beliefs of most denominations of Christianity. Through my own coming out process, I became especially familiar with their teachings on homosexuality. Setting aside these religious views, I could find little else in modern society that justified discrimination against homosexuality. To be more clear, I couldn’t understand why people would object so strongly to equal treatment of homosexuals in civil society.

About a month ago I read this article by Phil Harris on Townhall.com. Something he wrote stuck with me, and I’d like to share it with you today:

Immoral Indignation and Log-Infested Eyes

Moving beyond the sexual component of sexuality, and into the realm of relationships between people, there are some observations to make. This too has been twisted and perverted by homosexual activism, and is perhaps the most damaging and damning for society. Close, loving relationships can and do occur between all combinations of people, and sometimes these relationships can take the place of a commitment between a man and a woman.

People used to call this friendship, and sometimes we elevate that designation with another person as “best” friendships. There is nothing absurd or wrong with the idea that these relationships can supplant marriage in the course of the lives of two people. Until the relationship is bastardized by adding a sexual component, the devotion and caring and even life-long partnering between two people is fine.

This is really an interesting, unique statement from Mr. Harris. I’m not even sure where to begin to fully understand it. I think what we have here is another example of people focusing all of their attention on the sexual aspect of gay peoples’ lives. Well, maybe they are focusing on the sexual aspect of all peoples’ lives. Besides the physical, there is an emotional component to our sexuality, and in a gay person that emotional component is directed to people of the same gender while a straight person is emotionally drawn to someone of the opposite gender.

I can see how anyone can be physically stimulated by another person of either gender, but the emotional component is what will finally determine the sexual orientation of the person. To be completely blunt, two guys can have sex even if one or both of them are straight, and still claim to be straight because they are not emotionally drawn to each other. A gay man has sex with another man to fulfill not only sexual desire, but also emotional desire. But if you have sex without any emotional attachment that is wrong - emotionless sex is sinful, to use religious terms.

So why is emotionless sex wrong? If you are straight and have sex with another man in order to fulfill your sexual desire, you are ignoring your own nature - you are ignoring your heterosexuality. Having sex with someone you don’t care about is greed - you’re only doing it for your own pleasure; you’re fulfilling your lustful desires regardless of the other person. You are using that person as a sexual object. Now it is possible for anyone - gay or straight - to use someone else for sex that is in “harmony” with their orientation, it is still wrong for someone to use anyone else solely to satisfy sexual desires.

What bothers me most about Mr. Harris’ statement is his confusion between sex and friendship. It seems to me that he is saying my homosexuality prevents me from having any close friendships with other men who are not also homosexuals. That by my acknowledging my sexual orientation, I throw away the ability to have a close, nonsexual relationship with another man.

I think he is simply jumping to conclusions and making a lot of broad assumptions about the behavior and attitudes of gay men and straight men. I have more male than female friends, and my male friends are about 50/50 gay and straight. I purposely chose not to live in a “gay ghetto” because geography has more to do with the kinds of people who are your friends than just about anything else.

Well, I hope you’ll think about what Mr. Harris wrote and about what I wrote as well. I’d like to hear your thoughts. You can post them below or feel free to email me at pepe@integrityinservice.org.

¶ Posted 18 August 2008 † Pepe § Gay Theory § Website ‡ Comments (0)

The Advocate Takes On Elaine Donnelly

In this story from The Advocate, they take on the four main arguments advanced by Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, to support Don’t ask, Don’t tell. The best thing about this piece is that it is short and to-the-point. Here are the four main arguments, and you can click on the title to read the full story online:

Ma’am, Would You Care For Some Facts With That?

Argument 1: Sexual tension caused by gay soldiers will hurt morale and discipline.

Argument 2: More gay soldiers equals more HIV infections.

Argument 3: We don’t even know how many gay soldiers there are.

Argument 4: Open service by gays in other countries has been problematic.

¶ Posted 13 August 2008 † Pepe § Don't ask, Don't tell § Website ‡ Comments (0)

Qualities of a Great General

1. Tactically aggressive (loves a fight)

2. Strength of character

3. Steadiness of purpose

4. Acceptance of responsibility

5. Energy

6. Good health and strength

//signed// George Patton

Cadet

U.S.M.A.

April 29, 1909

¶ Posted 12 August 2008 † Pepe § Website § Military Leadership ‡ Comments (0)

Knowledge

You’ve probably heard a lot about the importance of information in today’s world. Instead of information, we could use the word “knowledge” and mean pretty much the same thing.

You may have heard the expression, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question.” Well, even when someone tries to comfort us with that cliche, we may often hesitate to ask when we don’t understand something. We’d rather pretend we know what’s going on than demonstrate a lack of knowledge.

I’ve found a couple of good tools online I can use to remedy my lack of knowledge that I’ll share with you. I’d also like to share these with you because I’d like to see more people online using resources that are more reliable than Wikipedia. I’m not trying to say that Wikipedia is all bad, but we know about several of the drawbacks from allowing the entire public to participate in compiling the information it contains. These sites are edited and/or controlled by an established organization or institution that provides more credibility. Wikipedia is a great point for starting out, but use these sites to help validate what you read on Wikipedia, or any other site for that matter.

The first one is about as basic as you can get: a dictionary. Specifically, it’s Merriam-Webster Online and it’s not just a dictionary. In addition to a source for word definitions, it is also a thesaurus, Spanish-English dictionary and medical dictionary. And it’s a heck of a lot more convenient than carrying around all those books. It’s also great to cut-and-paste definitions, so you can say things like, “According to Merriam-Webster, a cephalopod is…” The other great thing about this dictionary is that if you don’t know how to spell the word you are looking up, you can spell it to the best of your knowledge and M-W will provide different choices based on what word it thinks you might be looking for. And since most computers are equipped with speakers, you can also hear the proper pronunciation of the word.

The second reference is great for me because I work with a lot of legal contracts in my paying job and need to understand the language they use in order to explain it to clients. It’s a law dictionary from Law.com. It’s pretty easy to use, which I like. The biggest recommendation I would make for improving it would be to provide clickable links within the definitions leading to the definitions of other legal terms: some of the definitions can be rather complicated, and I need to look up what the terms in the definition mean and that entails doing another search. It would be much easier if I could click on a link within the definition and than hit “back” to return to the original subject. Anyway, it’s still a great resource and simple to use.

Moving into something a little more complex, I’d like to recommend the Library of Economics and Liberty - specifically the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. I was an Econ major in college, so maybe I’m a little biased. (Yes, people do actually choose to major in Economics of their own free will!) You hear a lot about the lack of science and math education and how this is leading to less of a competitive edge with the rest of the world. I think the same is true of economics. You hear so much on the news that revolves around economic decision-making: mortgage crises, rising gasoline prices, the ever-changing Fed rate, and so on; yet very few people understand any of the discussion taking place. It’s easy to be led astray when you don’t know what’s going on. If you visit this encyclopedia, it won’t turn you into an economist, but you can educate yourself on a variety of economic topics, and that way you can understand more of what is going on.

Finally I’d like to recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It’s not a dictionary that provides simple definitions of philosophical concepts and ideas, but more of a database of work done on different topics. You can look up articles on people like Plato or Aristotle; or ideas, such as Integrity or Honesty; and you can read discussions on topics like Pornography - what it is, whether we should censor it or not, and how would we go about doing that. It’s certain to get the wheels in your brain spinning.