THE RAINBOW GENERALS

               There was a time when the U.S. military's monolithic and enthusiastic response to presidential directives was an admirable and reassuring trait – such as its prompt and agile mobilization for all-out war after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.  Now, instead, the military leadership's headlong rush to fall enthusiastically in step with immoral and tyrannical policies such as the Obama administration's campaign to impose a radical pro-homosexual agenda on the entire nation should be cause for deep concern.

                Only recently, for example, the Pentagon has made special provisions to enable homosexual service members who decide to "marry" each other to travel cross-country to states that permit same sex marriage.  Seven to ten days of preferential and unchargeable leave will be granted to these same-sex military couples so they can circumvent the laws that limit marriage to one man and one woman in the state in which they are stationed or their state of residence.  This cross-country marriage leave will be fully paid, of course, as well as unchargeable, so unsuspecting citizens will be glad to know that they are now subsidizing same-sex military marriages with their taxes.  The Pentagon's policy on special leave arrangements for homosexual military honeymoons was not made clear.

                But this is hardly the only area in which homosexual troops are receiving special and preferred treatment, while their heterosexual comrades-in-arms are admonished to button their lips and salute the Rainbow Flag.  Although military personnel are generally prohibited from wearing their uniforms in off-duty parades or demonstrations, in 2012 the Defense Department specially authorized homosexual troops to wear their uniforms in a so-called Gay Pride parade in San Diego.  The Pentagon's utterly incoherent and circular justification for the preferential approval was that the organizers had "encouraged" gay troops to wear their uniforms and that the parade had received national attention.  Then the special permission was repeated for the same Gay Pride parade in 2013.  One can only imagine the sputtering response of Obama's politically correct generals and admirals if sponsors of the annual Right to Life March "encouraged" pro-life service members to wear their uniforms at the next March and requested a similar exemption.

                                                                  

Marine Legend Chesty Puller would not be amused by the Corps' LGBT Outreach                

                Elsewhere, U.S. Air Force officials recently defended a vulgar public performance by a bevy of drag queens at a so-called "Diversity Day" celebration officially sponsored at a Los Angeles Air Force Base.  An Air Force spokeswoman, aggressively defending this grotesque burlesque in language that would have done credit to Barney Frank himself, actually stated, "Drag acts to this day represent the struggle for freedom and equality of the LGBT community, while at the same time providing a deep-rooted form of historical entertainment for the LGBT culture."  The Air Force did not address the suitability of such "historical entertainment" for the young dependent children who would be exposed to it as they innocently strolled the base with their unsuspecting military parents. In a conflict between the unfettered expression of "LGBT culture" and the innocence of dependent military children we now know that the U.S. Air Force stands squarely with the drag queens.

                But the Air Force is not alone in its suddenly discovered enthusiasm for the LGBT agenda.  Two years ago, no sooner had the military's long-standing prohibition of homosexual acts been revoked than none other than the U.S. Marine Corps rushed headlong to outdo the other services in targeted recruitment of homosexuals.  Crew-cut Marine recruiters quickly deployed to gay community centers in an effort to take the lead in enticing homosexuals to enlist in their service.  See "Marines Hit the Ground Running in Seeking Recruits at Gay Center," NY Times (Sept. 11, 2011), at nytimes.com/2011/09/21.  Astonished Marine veterans everywhere can only ask, "Where is Chesty Puller when we need him?"  We can only be sure that, like Queen Victoria, he is "not amused."

                Far from amusing, the military leadership's unquestioning and gung ho embrace of the administration's pro-homosexual agenda is distinctly ominous.  As shown by the above examples, it goes well beyond merely minimal obedience to the letter of presidential directives and statutory requirements, and reflects a bizarre and unseemly enthusiasm for some of the most extreme tenets of LGBT orthodoxy.  It indicates that military leadership is willing to turn cartwheels and somersaults to curry favor with their political masters, at the expense of the vast majority of the troops in their command. 

                At the slightest tug of the strings by their presidential puppeteer, the military authorities instantly reversed long-held positions and policies respecting the dangers of homosexuality in the barracks to enthusiastically assume the role of pro-LGBT authoritarians and advocates -- ready, willing, and able to suppress and punish the views of brave soldiers and Marines whose moral and religious principles conflict with this profound and sudden reversal of a fundamental tenet of the military and moral code.

                One then can but wonder:  What other longstanding principles and standards of this Nation would today's sycophantic general staff be so enthusiastically and instantaneously prepared to abandon some day at the behest of a Caligulan president?     

        
                Before the time-honored military policy against homosexual activity in the military was repealed, then Marine Commandant James Amos had forcefully testified and spoken out against repeal, stressing that the distractions caused by homosexual incursion into the force may  even endanger the lives of Marines in combat.  But as soon as the traditional policy was reversed by the politicians in Washington, General Amos instantly suppressed his presumably genuine fear that the spread of openly homosexual Marines throughout the force would introduce a disruptive element that could endanger the lives of the Marine under his command.  Not content merely to suppress his misgivings about the safety of his troops, the compliant Commandant went so far as to declare that the Corps would now "step out smartly to faithfully implement" the new pro-homosexual directive. 

                 There was a time when a senior officer might have honorably resigned his commission rather than embrace a policy that he believed would endanger or deeply demoralize his troops, unless that policy were necessary for the defense of the Nation or other essential strategic objectives.  Needless to say, the accommodation of a pro-homosexual political agenda meets neither of those objectives.  Yet, far from either resigning or even continuing to offer principled dissent against the new policy, the Commandant insisted that the Corps must "step out smartly" and enthusiastically advance it.

                President Obama and his administration have repeatedly demonstrated their disregard for the restrictions of the Constitution and laws of the Nation in furthering their political objectives.  They have done so, to cite just a few examples, by categorically declining to enforce the immigration laws to deport illegal aliens, unilaterally dropping the requirement to seek work as a precondition to welfare, and selectively deciding which provisions of the health care reform law to enforce.

                Is it only a matter of time before this law-defying administration employs an unquestioningly subservient general staff to jettison other longstanding principles and standards in furtherance of its extreme political and social agenda?  At present, it is only members of the military itself whose constitutional and religious rights – such as the right to assert and obey one's religious beliefs on matters of sexual morality -- are being trampled by military commanders to force conformity to the regime's pro-LGBTpolicies.  Yet in an era when the invocation of even a chimerical terrorist threat can be used to justify the functional equivalent of martial law – witness the lockdown of Boston to enable militarized police to pursue a solitary teenage fugitive, see "Lockdown over Liberty in Boston," at splashingrocks.blogspot.com – peremptory deployment of the Armed Forces in unprecedented contexts and for unprecedented purposes does not seem as farfetched as it seemed only a decade ago.

                After all, it was only recently that a Department of Homeland Security report conflated those opposed to abortion and Big Government, as well as other conservative categories, with potential terrorists.  We might be only one crisis and one presidential terrorist designation away from a situation where a compliant general staff orders the troops to "step out smartly" to suppress ideologically disfavored groups of Americans.