G.O.P. Also-Ran Disses Gay Vets

Okay, serious time again. So, the gang at Towleroad tuned in to 60 Minutes last night and boy howdy, they did not like what they saw. As part of a report on gays in the miltary, some dude named Duncan Hunter who is, apparently, bringing up the rear of the G.O.P. Presidential race (and frontrunner Huckabee's pick for Secretary of Defense!) took his party's usual rhetoric—gays damage unit cohesion! or something!—to a new low, implying that, well, gays can serve in the military of other countries, but American military service is just a little too difficult for them:

We aren't the Brits. We're not the Europeans. We're not the Swedes,' says Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, who is the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. Hunter argues that gays do not belong in the U.S. military because American troops need to be hardened warriors, unlike soldiers in the 15 NATO countries where gays serve openly. 'The Fallujahs of the world, the Ramadis of the world that require heavy combat and lots of fire-fighting capability - those are the places the Americans go. The other countries tend to go to the so-called peacekeeper zones, where they have fewer fire fights and less contact with the enemy,' Hunter says. 'And the European nations show little will to send large contingents of their military people into dangerous places.'

No, I'm aware that we're not the Brits, or the Europeans, or the Swedes. They all have health care! (Sorry, a little knee-jerk liberal humor there.) But not only is this an insult to the soldiers who have fought and even lost their lives in peacekeeping missions for Europe and England, it is also an insult to the veterans of Duncan's own country who are forced to serve it in secrecy.

I have known brave, intellligent, competent, and, okay, if you want to go there, manly gay servicemen who were no doubt assets to the United States military, and it makes me sick that Hunter would insult them (and the closeted gay servicemen who undoubtedly served beside him). For heaven's sake, think of all the much-needed Arabic linguists our government trains on your tax dollar only to fire them for the crime of coming out! How many lives is that costing us in the Middle East?

Sorry, just had to get that out of my system; serious time's over now. Feel free to make all the "hardened warrior" jokes you want in the comments section.