Like I just finished saying, I don’t. I propose to count boots on the ground. I argued that given that most cases of poor performance severe enough to warrant discharges are likely to be from a compounding of factors, that’s likely to be a fair proxy. (If you want more on why that’s likely to be true, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither ). I invited you to make a counterargument and you bailed, so I regard it as settled – we’re counting boots on the ground.

Exactly what gives you the idea that I am not entering that into the equation? I’m not saying it definitely won’t be enough to compensate for the decrease in performance elsewhere, only that that’s the question that will have to be asked, and you don’t know the answer to that any better than I do.

A question; how to you propose to measure homophobia once it becomes official policy not to show outward signs of it, and recruits know they have to keep it inside?

(I may not have computer access for the next week, by the way, in case I don’t answer you johnny-on-the-spot. We’re both talking to a largely empty audience now, I guess, and if someone else asks just what either of us is trying to prove they’d have a point).

Nonsense. The standard should be boots on the ground on both sides of the equation. If you don’t have to throw their sorry asses out for poor performance, you count their boots, and you count them against the boots of the competent gays who want to join. Very possibly there will be some subtle but broad degradation of performance insufficient in and of itself to warrant discharge. But at the margins, in conjunction with the many other factors that can degrade performance, such an effect will lead to a countable decrease in boots on the ground.

Of course, if you have some reason for thinking that the effect at the margins on boots on the ground will be wildly disproportionate to the effect on overall effectiveness (besides desperately wanting it to be true to salvage your argument), then let me know. But if you insist on wanting to measure and count extra subtle performance degradations among homophobes, be warned that I will also insist you measure and count performance _increases_ among the gay members already serving, who will no longer be subject to the demoralizing effects of DADT.

No, the criterion is whether or not the number more subtly affected in ways which affect performance but are not “virulently homophobic” is greater than the number of competent gays who want to join.

I don’t propose to try. I could care less about their discomfort in and of itself. If they can suck it up and perform well in the presence of gay/lesbian fellow servicepeople then it’s no skin off my nose. If they can’t, and their discomfort degrades their performance, it’s _their_ poor performance and _they’re_ the ones who need to be thrown out.

Now of course, _I_ say that for primarily moral reasons: I think that homophobia is the true evil and simply should not be pandered to, any more than racism among servicepeople should be pandered to. An argument from expediency would have to be pretty overwhelming for me take it seriously. But if you are going to raise the expediency question, then as I was trying to say, the correct criterion is whether the number of people you’d have to throw out in the above fashion is greater than the number of extra competent gay people who’d want to join. And the answer is pretty obviously going to be no. Virulent homophobia is primarily a creation of disinformation and rarely survives living and working with openly gay people.

Mark, the big problem with that argument is that you are not going to be able to determine just who is and who isn’t “uncomfortable”. You think they are all going to advertise it? Or do you think they should just be assumed to be having a “homophobia” problem if they exhibit any problem at all?

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.