Only a fourth of troops surveyed on gays respond

[Tx4obama]

Source: Associated Press (via HuffPo)

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department says that only about a quarter of the troops sent a survey on gays in the military have responded.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said Thursday that close to 103,000 service members have completed the survey, which asks questions like how they would react if assigned to a room with a gay person.

The Defense Department had delivered 400,000 surveys to troops as part of its study on how it could lift the ban without hurting morale. The deadline to respond is Sunday.

Smith said 150,000 surveys will be sent to troops' family members later this month.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100812/us-gays-military/

[arcane1]

1. "surveys will be sent to troops' family members"??

WTF for??

[Frisbee]

4. Desperately trying to find a reason, any reason...

to continue DADT.

[Tx4obama]

7. The results of the survey will not affect Congress' vote to permanently repeal DADT

The repeal of DADT is in the Defense Appropriations Bill which the Senate will be voting on in the next few months.
The only thing that was agreed upon was that the survey be sent out - the results of the survey will not have affect on the Congress' vote.

[Frisbee]

8. Oh, I don't dispute that at all...

I just suspect there may still be some in the Pentagon who are grasping at straws because they see the writing on the wall. In the end though, they are fighting a losing battle. (again)

[Bluebear]

14. Then why spends over $4 million on it?

[Tx4obama]

16. Because the military/pentagon requested it. Money down the drain. n/t

[No Elephants]

25. IF true-emphasis on IF-all the more reason not to poll family.

There wasn't even a reason to poll military. Truman didn't need a poll to know giving one group of military less respect and equality than the majority group was evil and had to end. He gave the order and troops fell in line, period.

Btw, how do you know for certain that a survey being mailed this month will definitely not affect a vote that is not scheduled to be taken for several months? When are the surveys due back?

[No Elephants]

26. Barney Frank said long ago that Congress would not vote on DADT until after mid-terms.

And he seemed perfectly fine with that. Yes, I said Barney Frank.

[MadMaddie]

33. Perhaps if they voted on DADT the Democratic House and

Senate members could lose seats. If they wait until after the elections they could possibly pick up seats and vote without worry of voters retaliation.

Nothing like gay rights to motivate teh right wing.

Could it have been strategic? Barney Frank is no idiot...

[Zenlitened]

17. That was exactly my reaction, too.

:wtf:

[mzteris]

19. ditto - wtf for? n/t

[kenfrequed]

2. Okay two things...

1) How many people usually fill out voluntary surveys?

2) What friggin difference does it make what a soldiers family thinks of this?

3) Does anyone else think that surveying troops like this looks utterly idiotic? I mean I don't recall desegregation of the military being a matter of a survey.

[kenfrequed]

3. Sorry...

That was three things, still the point stands.

[TygrBright]

5. "Only" a fourth? That's a big response!

Usually voluntary surveys are answered at a rate of (if the surveying entity is good at its job) 5-10%, maybe a bit more if they are surveying an interest group that isn't too "cold." Even given the "following orders" culture of the military, 25% is a big response.

It will be interesting to see how they are responding. I suspect, if the surveys were designed honestly and well, that there will be some surprises in store.

interestedly,
Bright

[Gormy Cuss]

18. Ten percent for a general population mail survey with no follow up or incentives,

but 25-30% is about typical for a well-managed mail survey through two rounds of reminders as long as a token incentive is used. I don't know if they did any reminders or offered incentives here though.

I'd worry about a strong bias in the response with such a low response rate and it could go either way but I'd guess that it's more likely to be biased against open LBGT participation because the highly motivated responders are likely to be those opposed to it.

At any rate, it will be interesting to see the results.

[No Elephants]

27. The surveys were NOT designed honestly. The questions were bs.

[RKP5637]

6. This is really really getting werid... when are they starting the surveys to

see how everyone feels about various races, or people that wear glasses... on and on...
Well, we tried, but we couldn't, not enough respondents, therefore they must want DADT.

[JonLP24]

9. Troops families??

WTF do they have to do with DADT. :wtf:

I don't think surveys should be done but why the families?

[jmowreader]

20. You don't seem to know who actually runs the military

It's not the soldiers or even the generals, it's the spouses. The most powerful single organization on any base is the Officers Wives Club, and they do shit you won't believe.

In the early 1990s the Army decided to get the porn out of the PX. You used to be able to get porn like Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler at the PX. They had about the same porn selection as any gas station. The porn was bagged, kept behind a shield and up so high a kid couldn't reach it--hell, it was up high enough half the SOLDIERS couldn't reach it. The OWCs got together and found a congressman who would listen, and got rid of the porn. Justification: a child might go up in the barracks and see the porn on a soldier's nightstand.

You must understand that in the 1990s the only place you could find an open-bay barracks was at Fort Benning, for the trainees--and trainees don't get to have porn. Seriously, guys, there should be NO way the colonel's daughter would go into the barracks and uncover the secret stash of porn we all know is there, but they got it out of the PX. Now the soldiers have to go to the dirty book store off post and buy the really rank porn because the wives have managed to eradicate the relatively tame porn from the PX. I swear, when I win the Powerball I am going to put enough money on deposit at the offices of Screw Magazine to purchase one thousand one-year subscriptions, which will be held in reserve for anyone who screams that something on network television or on a benign website is "porn." I figure if these people want to bitch about things being porn, they should see what porn worthy of the name looks like.

[JonLP24]

22. Not anymore

Last time I was on base was in Ft Lewis in July '08 and they had dirty magazines at the PX. You're talking to someone who was in the Army this decade. Single soldiers live in barracks. You have to guests or family members sign in for a short period of time. I hardly ever saw kids at the barracks. I think I saw kids once on a weekend the entire time I was there.

I do know family members often work on-post jobs. Still I don't why their opinion matters.

[jmowreader]

23. I never saw kids in the barracks either

And the porn thing is cyclical...in my 12 years they banned porn from the PX three different times. I expect it to happen again. I never saw kids in the barracks either, but that is the justification used.

Here's the cycle: The PX starts selling porn. There's a certain fundamentalist element in the military, and they write to their congressmen complaining about how the porn is going to corrupt the morals of minors if the soldiers have access to it. Congress then passes a law taking porn out of the PX. (BTW, did you know there is a law that says what the PX can carry?) Next, AAFES (the only retailer in America that's worse than Walmart) says too much money is leaving post because soldiers have to go to the dirty book store downtown to buy their porn, and the morals of minors are now REALLY getting corrupted because the dirty book store has serious porn not the lightweight shit the PX had, and the porn goes back in. Two years later the fundamentalists start another assault.

[JonLP24]

24. Ok, ok I'm not disputing you

I had no idea AAFES is worse than Wal*Mart. The one thing I always liked about AAFES is they had the best deals on alcohol and gas in the whole Ft. Lewis-Lakewood area. :)

[jmowreader]

30. Yeah, AAFES taught Walmart how to be evil

Okay, check this shit out: One of my guys in Berlin claimed the prices in the PX always went up the day after the military got a pay raise. I thought he was probably right--they know when their customers have money, right?--but just to check it a bunch of us went to the Berlin Main Exchange and wrote down a bunch of prices the day before the pay raise...two days later we went back and every price was higher by a little more than the pay raise. IIRC the pay raise was 3.2 percent and the price hike was five percent, but thanks to the fuckheads at the PX we actually got a pay CUT.

They also have the most wonderful way of dealing with bad checks: instead of calling your company commander, they simply garnish your pay for the amount of the bad check. Not even Walmart does that! (Hopefully the government told them to knock that shit off.)

At Fort Drum, the Army made the worst mistake in its long history: they allowed AAFES to run the club system. Oh. My. God. After they "revamped" the post's recreational offerings (which now consist of the gym, the library that's impossible to get to if you don't have a car, and a lot of junior troops do not, and a LOT of places to buy booze) the DWI rate went through the roof. Well gee...cabs are expensive as fuck and there aren't enough of them, the bus service is specifically geared toward bringing spouses from their quarters to the PX and not toward soldiers and it doesn't run after 8pm anyway, and it's 38 degrees below zero on the 4th of July so you can figure out how fucking cold it gets in the winter. If you have to pee when you're in the field, you don't need to shake it out, just do your business then snap the icicle off the end of it. Works for women too! At piss test NCO school the commanding general came in and charged us with the sacred duty of lowering the DWI rate. I told him it would be pretty simple: just put the Morale, Welfare and Recreation Branch back in charge of the club system like it is everywhere else. He said he tried that the day he took command and AAFES told him to go to hell.

So...you have a retail system that screws the troops seven ways to Sunday and can't be stopped. Worse: they want the commissaries, which are currently owned by the Defense Commissary Service, and the Navy and Marine Corps exchanges. (The Navy and Marines have repeatedly told them to go fuck themselves.) At Fort Drum I only bought one class of merchandise from the PX: parts for my uniform, because Clothing Sales is required to sell that stuff at the government's price. (BTW, Berlin had the last non-AAFES Clothing Sales Store in the government. When it got taken over, we held a wake.) Everything else, I bought downtown.

[tomm2thumbs]

10. have they surveyed the troops on multiple-repeated tours in Afghanistan? or is that less important?

[gkhouston]

11. They sure as hell haven't surveyed the families on that. I guess it's okay to push-poll

Mom and Dad about whether their darling child should be serving when them scary gay folk but God forbid you should ask whether it's all right to send them back for another round of PTSD.

[arcane1]

12. Have they surveyed the families about getting killed in a war?

This whole thing is just crazy! On THIS topic, suddenly the troops and families' opinions matter? :crazy:

[msongs]

13. cowards send out surveys. leaders decide on merits nt

[JI7]

15. no response means people don't care

if people really had a problem with this they would have responded with their complaints.

[SKKY]

29. Ding! Ding! Ding!

We have a winner. The vast majority of the military couldn't care less if homosexuals are allowed to serve openly or not. You would be amazed at how little we actually spend talking about this particular issue.

[athenasatanjesus]

21. Do they survey all the troops and their families before starting wars? nt

[No Elephants]

28. If only Democrats controlled Congress, or the CIC were a Democrat, this charade would have ended in.

January of last year.

[sofa king]

31. Hmm. Because they're being ASKED to TELL?

After what, fifteen years of being taught not to acknowledge the subject, what can we expect?

[Vidar]

32. Statistically, a 25% return rate on such surveys is far better than

average. The poor Pentagon just isn't getting the results it wanted.