Almalieque wrote:
Lol, you just don't realize the lifestyle of the military.... In your attempt to try to be as "gay" as possible, I'm thinking of a couple of straight people that I know that fit most of that except of the "holding hands part" and extended family part, but no I never get that far into anyone's business to even know that they're gone let alone know who they are actually seeing.
You know, that's kinda the point of DADT, no matter how questionable your behavior is, unless you actually do something like hold hands, say something or make a video, they can't question you nor do you have to answer.
So let's take this one.
You seem to be saying A) No-one in the military knows what each other's personal life it. If you aren't saying that, you seem to be saying few people in the military know anything much about each other's personal life.
B) In conjunction with other posts of yours, you seem to be saying that IF superior officer discovers a homosexual in the military, they won't kick them out anyway.
C) If a superior officer suspects someone is homosexual, they cannot question them about it, and the homosexual doesn't have to incriminate him or her self. That is true under DADT, and I don't challenge that.
A) As a proportional thing, I'll believe many personnel don't know much about each other's personal life. However, you've admitted that things like one person walking in on gays having sex are things that happen occasionally. Secondly, if the housing officers don't know, what about the censors? You're expecting gay personnel never to say anything loving or intimate in their correspondence, to keep their romance alive while away? How about the network administrators. There's a lot of traffic, but I REALLY hope that there is a little security oversight dipping in and out of all the personnel communications, to check for spying activities, or genuine stupidity in the face of national security.
Thirdly, my lieutenant then captain buddy in the Australian army, who I usually saw weekly for 9 years, had a heap of army stories to share with us, I'd say they'd come up on an average of a monthly basis. These stories usually involved the activities of himself, his friends and his wider workmates, out to battalions he wasn't even part of. Said activities included hi-jinks and shenanigans during duty and missions; the personal and sex lives of fellow personnel; and sexual and mild sensual or fore-play activity indulged in while on extended wilderness training or long term consecutive base hours.
The most notorious of those I'd say would be the company finger-sucking-each-other-and-grading-performance competition, during a mixed personnel camp-out, which had no repercussions, and the Daisy-Chain incident, which got every private except for one in a company sacked. But personally my favourite story had no sex in it at all. It involved the sh
it storm when some soldiers at the start of a convoy removed and temporarily stowed some road signs as a joke that went horribly wrong, and not only got the rest of the convoy lost as intended, but had their heavy vehicles thunder hundreds of kilometres off into the outskirts of Darwin as not intended, onto public roads not designed to bear the weight. And the manoeuvres the miscreants went through to successfully sneak back and re-attach the signs without being missed from their own vehicles and the base, or being detected with any other vehicle.
My army friend knew who was making desperate night-time scrambles over the in-town base perimeter fences and why. He certainly knew the basics about everyone in his company, and who they were going out with, who was getting married, divorced, or having a child. He knew the eye colour of each of the people he went on patrol or training with.
But he was a very gregarious chap, charming and friendly. Very dark skinned, a Sri Lankan-Australian, with big liquid brown eyes. Maybe he picked up all the scuttle-but when he was on one of his several potato peeling duties, during that long period he was a less than perfect officer about punctuality and maintaining physical fitness standards, especially the run-time limit.
Fourthly, don't privates and officers have graduation, medal and military ceremonies during which family, especially partners usually attend? What about those occasional officer formal dinners, or formal balls, with partners?
B) both military and civilian societies have laws around which aren't enforced, but are kept around for "just in case THIS time it's important", or "just in case there's no other way to nick him". Jay-walking laws are like that in Australia, and so are many of the road-worthy laws. Police officers pulling over suspected drug carriers will charge them for having rust on their cars, or nicks, scratches or dents in the panels, or a chip in the windscreen, if they can't find any drugs. While they won't pull over any other car for the same defects. And if they pull you over for an alcohol breath test, they won't charge you for the rust, nicks, scratches, or dents.
But being gay isn't like having rust on your car. There's no reason not to be gay, while there is some reason not to have a rusty car. Just because officials usually ignore both, doesn't mean that the first should bear the stigma and risk of an outlaw.