Conway: If gays serve openly, Marines may not share rooms

[unhappycamper]

Conway: If gays serve openly, Marines may not share rooms
By Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post
Online Edition, Saturday, March 27, 2010

The Marine Corps’ top officer said he would not force straight Marines to share rooms with gay servicemembers if Congress repeals the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law and allows gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces.

Gen. James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, told the Web site Military.com in an interview published Friday that an “overwhelming” number of Marines would be opposed to bunking with someone of a different sexual orientation. As a result, he said, the Corps might have to ditch its double-bed rooms and offer single rooms to everyone.

“We want to continue (two-person rooms), but I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it,” Conway told the Web site. The Marine Corps is the only branch of the armed services that requires its unmarried members to share rooms, a policy meant to foster unit cohesion.

Conway has been an outspoken opponent of efforts to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, which Congress adopted in 1993.

“I think the current policy works,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. “My best military advice to this committee, to the secretary, to the president, would be to keep the law such as it is.”


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=68956

[chillspike]

1. hmmm

would these same marines be opposed to sharing their rooms with female service members?

[old mark]

2. Look, gays are already in the Marine Corps, have been since day 1.

I am sure many are sharing rooms with straight Marines already. Showers, too.
As well as patrols, guard duty, piloting aircraft, and that universal Marine Corps job, being a rifleman.

Gays have been around since before the Marines existed.

I am pleased and grateful that they want to serve.

mark

[doc03]

3. I served in the Army in the 60's and there were gays

in the Army then. I had two buddies that worked as clerks for a Re-enlistment Recruiter that according to them hit on both of them, that's as far as it went. I find it strange a Marine can storm a beach with gun blazing and he couldn't handle a gay room mate, the poor things.

[Leftist Agitator]

4. There were thousands of gay men in the military during WWII.

No one much gave a fuck when we were fighting Hitler and the Japanese. But after the war, all of a sudden, the gays were a threat to their comrades-in-arms for the first time ever.

In fact, that's how The Castro in San Francisco got its start. That's where gay sailors and soldiers (mostly sailors) were offloaded for being gay. It's pretty fucked up that this is still even an issue seventy years later. Someone once said something about atheists in foxholes. Fuck that. I guarantee you that nobody ever asked the guy next to him in a so-called foxhole if he liked cock or pussy.

My brother is an Army Reservist, and one of the guys in his unit, Dave, got into it with some Neanderthal at a bar once. After beating his ass, Dave said, "How does it feel to know that you got your ass kicked by a faggot?" The wrong person overheard him say that, and that was the unceremonious end of his military career. Mind you, this guy had been to Iraq twice and from what I saw was universally admired by the guys in his unit. But God forbid that he likes guys instead of women or nobody instead...

doc03, you know this, and so does anyone who's ex-military and not bigoted. The idea that anyone in the military cares who you fuck is a farce, plain and simple.

[bullimiami]

5. someone really needs to grow the hell up. are they worried the 'straight' marines will be corrupted?

[marshall]

6. Single rooms for all is the only acceptable option if they MUST have a change

I agree that it seems like a non-issue to me. But if the powers that be in the Marines decide for whatever imagined reason that straights shouldn't share quarters with gays I'm glad that from the beginning this guy is suggesting a change for all, and not just for some.

[hunter]

7. Who knew? All it takes is a few gay people to terrorize our brave Marines...

I've slept in the same rooms and (gasp!) even showered with all sorts of people, male and female, gay and straight. Yeah, there have been people I don't like and wouldn't want to share a room with, but mostly it's been about things like smoking in non-smoking areas, bullying, noisy drunken revelry in places that our supposed be quiet past a certain time, and most of all, blowhard political or religious whackery.

No thanks, I've not been Born Again, I don't believe Ronald Reagan was a great president, and wet towel snapping was old even in high school.