http://www.stljewishlight.com/topstories/15319555876295.php

Air Force Lt. Col Victor Fehrenbach has made the rounds on radio and television ever since he came forward with the news that the Air Force was trying to discharge him under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He even scored a meeting at the White House during the much-derided LGBT Cocktail Party to mark the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion in June. What hasn’t been told was how Lt. Col Fehrenbach got caught in the DADT crosshairs to begin with:

Fehrenbach confronted a crisis in a very different setting. A Boise police detective sat across a conference table questioning him about an alleged crime.

Fehrenbach, stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base, was in a Catch-22. To clear himself of the claim he’d raped a man, Fehrenbach could tell police his side of the story. But admitting he’d had consensual sex could get him kicked out of the Air Force he loved after 18 years.

Fehrenbach asked Detective Mark Vucinich whether his employer had a right to see his statement. Yes, replied Vucinich.

Fehrenbach then told the detective he had sex with Cameron Shaner on May 12, 2008. He’d met Shaner, 30, on a gay Web site and invited him to his southeast Boise home.

Police and Air Foce investigations found no evidence that Lt. Col. Fehrenbach committed any crime. But Shaner, a discharged Army Veteran with a 100 percent service-connected disability for post-traumatic stress disorder and skeletal injuries, pressed the Air Force to begin discharge proceedings against Fehrenbach — all because of a false allegation:

Because of the criminal allegation, Victor confirmed the fact he was gay,” said Emily Hecht, a lawyer for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund. “That’s all the Air Force needed. Had his accuser been a woman, he’d have gone back to work with no further issue.”

The unique circumstances behind Fehrenbach’s case has caught the attention of Defense Secretary Bill Gates and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, who has the final call on whether Fehrenbach will be dismissed. He is currently still on active duty at Mountain Home Air Force Base near Boise, Idaho.

What on earth do you imagine that would accomplish? Anyone would think you thought that DADT was close to a good policy on the merits and just needed a bit of tweaking. And to the extent that’s true, it’s a sign of how unmoored the discussion has become from where it started. Nobody involved in the passing of DADT thought it was a sensible policy - Clinton thought it was the least bad deal he could get and the conservatives who got the last word on the text of the law were literally having a joke at his expense. Certainly no one thought it was about showers. It was all about gay sex.

Shorter DADT: Having same-sex sex is prejudicial to good order and military discipline. It is vital that all personnel having same-sex sex or likely to have same-sex sex be thrown out. We make a non-binding recommendation that the Secretary of Defence consider not Asking and giving warnings against Telling. But if (ha, ha) that turns out not to be the best way to expel personnel likely to have gay sex, we encourage him to do whatever it takes.

No, seriously, that’s what the law amounts to: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/dontasklaw.html .

RK: “Again, Rusty, and please answer the question instead of evading it, do you propose that women in the military (or in integrated combat units) shower or bathe in front of the men? Or do you propose that gays shower or bathe separately from straights? The questions are relevant here.”

Fair question, so I’ll give my answer as well: I would maintain shower segregation for the sexes, because what I take to justify that in the first place is more the power imbalance than the gender contrast. But I wouldn’t institute shower segregation for each sex individually because gays and straights are already showering together in the military and it doesn’t seem to have been a problem. The gay guys are undoubtedly very discretely ogling the good-looking guys, gay or straight, and any straight guy with enough brain cells to be in the military must realize there’s a possibility he’s being ogled. He’s certainly being sized up, if only by other straight guys. If he wasn’t up for that, he shouldn’t have joined the military.

RK: “It is about whether or not enough of them WILL be uncomfortable about it that it will affect military cohesion.”

No, it’s about whether enough of them will be uncomfortable that you can’t throw their sorry homophobic asses out and replace them by all the extra gay guys who will want to join.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEc4YWICeXk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOROaABCBgQ

Even Hollywood had it’s own DADT. . .

Some of the brightest have even played ‘gay’ men. and won awards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBuDMEpUc8k

BTW, I think that a heterosexual in the military who badgers others (even of equal rank) with questions about whether or not they are gay is as much a threat to unit cohesion as one who boasts excessively about his being gay (probably even more so), and should be treated accordingly.