Two unrelated(?) stories

The Pentagon is reviewing its "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military [Source]. This past week at Fort Hood a four-star general held a sounding session with a crowd of soldiers to test public opinion.

In a completely unrelated story, this Army captain is trying to build relationships with elders in Afghanistan.

For Americans, it's weird to see guys holding hands. It was only when I saw guys in South Korea holding hands (soldiers sometimes do it too), that I realized why. It was a mirror back on my own culture.

We Americans seem particularly uncomfortable with the gay thing, especially among Western nations. Maybe it's the church culture. In any case, there's a dichotomy about us (not just about this issue) that's hard to explain. Most people don't even care what's going on in our next-door neighbors' lives -- "as long as it doesn't involve me." At the same time, people get homocidal about reforming health care.

Then there's "gays in the military."

Contrary to what many would like to think, we've had gays in the Army for a very long time. They're just required to keep quiet. If a roommate or squad leader finds out, their career's over. I would imagine it's not easy to keep suspicion-free. Not even information disclosed to chaplains or lawyers is restricted. Unfortunately for this ROTC cadet, conflicting issues of duty and integrity led to dismissal.

While I'm in favor of discretion for both sexualities, I don't mind serving with gay soldiers. That said, there I are two things about a change in policy that I'm afraid of: first, the awkwardness of working with someone who is "very" openly gay (just as I am uncomfortable around guys who are way too open about their heterosexual lives), and second, the potential limitations on chaplains in counseling homosexuals.

Tolerance is not the same as acceptance. Our society tolerates a certain measure of dissoluteness in heterosexuals, but that doesn't mean we're happy with it. I suspect that -- at some point -- a newly "tolerated" soldier is going to confuse the two, go too far, and something bad is going to happen.

Second, I wonder how this is going to impact our chaplains. They do a great job of "meeting people where they are" on the religiosity scale (meaning they don't push the religion aspect at the expense of a soldier's needs), but a new culture of gay tolerance will require them to adjust their practices, as this story about "muzzling" explains.

I'd like to know how the other militaries of the Western world deal with the issue. And I wonder how things work on the NATO bases in Afghanistan -- such as the one in Kandahar -- where you have multinational forces working together.

Maybe by looking at how other cultures work it out we can figure out how to implement any changes to our own system.