Badpuppy Gay Today

Monday, 09 June 1997

In dull and pointedly dogmatic tones, Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth Bacon, tried vainly at a press conference late last week, to convince the nation no double-standard was involved in recent top-brass treatment accorded the first-woman B-52 pilot-accused- adulteress-Kelly Flinn. Her unhappy discharge has been followed, in contrast, by Defense Secretary Cohen's controversial retention of 4-star General Joseph W. Ralston, his friend and his self-admitted adulterous top-choice for Chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"If you're a friend of the Secretary of Defense!" quipped Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) "you're in. In fact, you might just get a promotion." The White House has backed Secretary Cohen's decision on Ralston.

Representative Rita Lowey (D-N.Y.) fumed, "The Pentagon is employing a double standard! Some just get a pat on the back. Some a slap on the wrist and some booted from the Armed Services altogether!" In light of the Coast Guard's recent invasion of a soon-to-retire gay guard's privacy, talk of such "booting" takes on poignant significance by pointing to a third level of bogus standard-making.

The third standard in the military's self-created quagmire was recalled by Judge Betty Fletcher in a February Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, when she argued that a forthright person, namely openly-gay Petty Officer Mark Phillips, has been booted from the military while allowing the shenanigans of boasting heterosexuals who tell freely of off-duty sex in private. If one sort of boast is allowed and the other isn't, she said, its "pure discrimination."

If this logical legal criticism stung Navy and Pentagon officials, alarmed members of the Armed Services now know, as a long-ago gay veteran of the military's double-standard scrutiny explained, that sex-villain witchhunts are no fun. "Now those straight guys in the service are finding out what its like when military prudes are peeping over their bedposts," he said, pleading for an end to prudery across the board.

Kenneth Bacon, in utilizing his unique brand of Pentagon-spokesperson-repartee, repeated military regulations, and, some say, became quite ungentlemanly for his mindless and repetitive attacks on the character of the outgoing B-52 pilot Kelly Flinn.

On the other hand, he defended the Secretary of Defense's pious retention of a big- brass male adulterer, General Joseph W. Ralston, on grounds that Ralston's adultery was not deemed, by Secretary Cohen, a situation that violated "good order and discipline." Kelly Flinn's situation, Bacon more than implied, did. Bacon spoke for Secretary Cohen at a news conference as to why he'd allowed the nation's first woman B-52 pilot to be booted from military service:

"She was charged with fraternization. She was charged with disobeying a direct order. She was charged with lying. She was charged with conduct unbecoming to an officer. And she was charged with adultery. Add up all the charges, they come back to activities that compromise good order and discipline."

Secretary of Defense Cohen's intention, by "forgiving" General Ralston's adultery, is said to be Cohen's way of "drawing a line." Analysts surmise that overall military morale is on the wane and that Cohen is using the Ralston case to put a cap on worrisome military court cases. In Congress, there has been some talk of needing to educate military-trainers on sex-sensitive issues and, in the meantime, instituting a temporary dividing of the sexes in the armed forces. Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, departed scornfully from this plan: "Women should not become the victims because those in leadership positions fail!" The plan, thus far, has received no significant support.

At the topmost levels of the military, alarm over increased sex-policing activity is at an all-time high. Some have compared the situation to fundamentalist morality police who disallow unmarried fraternizing and go knocking on bedroom doors in present-day Iran. Some U.S. military leaders have come forward hoping to put a stop to snooping. Little, it is clear, can be done to stay the publicity from still-to-be-tried cases rolling backwards like self-destructing tanks into explosive recorded annals, reflections that are erotic in nature, to be read by future generations of military strategists pondering the evolution of an institution they're sworn to obey.

Morale is said to be especially low on U.S. military bases like Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where, as on other bases, intense sex-scandal investigations are presently proceeding, in spite of Pentagon denials to the contrary. The number of gay men and lesbians "booted" from military service has reached an almost decade-long high. "The military is finally coming face-to-face with what its always taken-for-granted, its passion to get pushy, or macho domination." said Maria Valdez, a feminist. "These pretenders, running amok, are making soap-opera-tune-ins of United States military procedure from one day to the next."

At Aberdeen rumors are ugly. Three men have been found guilty of sexual misconduct with women. Three more men have court marshals pending. Aberdeen's Commander, Major General John Longhouser's resignation from his position involved an affair he conducted five years ago, though married yet separated from his wife at the time. Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) expressed outrage following Cohen's uncritical acceptance of Longhouser's resignation. "It's totally, grossly, unfair. Something's got to be done about it. This thing's gotta stop!"

Thursday a plea by Sergeant Major Gene C. McKinney was made for access to a quick retirement and an honorable discharge while facing charges by four women who say they've been recipients of unworthy self-presentations by Sgt. McKinney that turned into his especially-unwanted advances. He denies the four womens' charges, while pundits reflect that the President of the United States himself is involved in a similar unruly scrape. McKinney, who is married, is the Army's top enlisted man. His career began teetering when he was appointed to the military's panel investigating sexual abuses. At that point, Sergeant Major Brenda L Hoster decided it was time to come forward, saying that not only had she gotten McKinney's unwanted advances but that her own military superiors were concealing the matter. Sergeant Hoster's charges are being taken seriously by military commanders.

Also on Thursday, Sergeant Julius Davis, stationed on a U.S. base in Germany, was cleared of six counts of rape though he was convicted of multiple indecent assaults. For these assaults Davis got 2 years in prison, a reduction in rank, and a bad conduct discharge. Davis left the military court blaming the CID, and, especially the "females"--a word he used repeatedly to describe his accusers-- whose joy in his conviction had visibly infuriated him. His life, he complained, was being ruined.

Heterosexuals in the military are, as a result of the mushrooming of opposite-sex scandals, being perceived as unable to keep their hands to themselves. This was the same charge anti-gay propagandists brought against gay people, though public charges of assault by gays in the military have been extremely rare. Blame for the current crisis, say some critics, lies with the military's heightened state of sexual repression, coupled with what, to some, is its scripturally-sanctioned pride in the wielding of a dominator's patriarchal power. This kind of pride seems content to lord it over women and gays, according to England's Edward Carpenter, a gay liberation pioneer who wrote about the sexes in the last century.