Badpuppy Gay Today

Wednesday, 11 June 1997

In a quick reading of the public's mood, Secretary of Defense Cohen accepted the resignation of the once adulterous man he was primed to choose as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and is now faced with finding a replacement. The Pentagon reluctantly bowed--(after the dismissal of a woman who was perceived as an adulteress) before public charges of a double standard which, some of the more angry insisted, had overstepped proper bounds and had stumbled into double dealing.

Secretary Cohen seemed not to comprehend the intensity of the public's scorn on this issue. It was clear he had accepted the resignation of 4-star General Joseph W. Ralston reluctantly, as he reflected to the media that he thought that if this had happened in another time (away from intense media focus on the disparity between Lt. Kelly Flinn's dismissal and Secretary Cohen's attempt to place a male adulterer in militarydom's most prestigious seat) General Ralston's choice would not have been contested.

Many commentators across the land have called in the last few days for an end to 19th century sexual codes in the military, while Americans seem riveted, by one infuriating angle in the case or another and by the blatant unfairness they see in clumsy military sexual proceduralism they're witnessing. "It is to be hoped," suggested one prominent gay strategist, that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' will now be placed under a brighter, more realistic public spotlight."

"What we are witnessing," says Paula Vogel, a playwright, is a mid-air collision between 19th century laws and 21st century lives." Ms. Vogel calls for "nothing less than the protection of privacy for all citizens"--gay men and lesbians are included in her protective call. Presently the number of dismissals of gay men and lesbians from military service are at a nearly-decade-long high.

"The military has only wounded itself," says Anthony Lewis in The New York Times. Lewis, like others, reflects that the wrong question is, as usual, being asked. The right question, in Mr. Lewis' opinion is : "whether the sin, without more, should be treated as a crime at all?."

This question has been asked already by millions of Americans, who, though they may have experienced adultery as both pain or joy, seem to agree that it belongs in the private domain as a concern and not in the workplace, whether military or civilian.

"Would a sane military system put an honored officer through such humiliation for such a reason?"asks Anthony Lewis, "....Adultery remains a sin. But it is also a fact of life in contemporary American society. One of the all-time best selling books in this country, The Bridges of Madison County, romanticizes--you could really say celebrates--adultery."

Lewis points out that neither the British nor the French Armies make adultery a military offense. Between 1985 and the present, military court marshals for adultery have risen in the U.S. from six in the Mid-80'S to 168 in 1996.