America’s Homosexual Soldiers

The U.S. Congress will allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military services. It’s not the first time the military has been the instrument of social change in America.

Ex-President Jimmy Carter, who has blossomed into a national provocateur in his later years, gets right to the point. Yes, Carter says, his countrymen will eventually elect a homosexual president, and thus the country will have a gay commander-in-chief. Perhaps it won’t happen in 2012 (Barack Obama will naturally run again), but sometime in the future. Nothing’s impossible any longer.

Carter is only looking forward to the logical outcome of what has been transpiring for years: Gays and lesbians are being increasingly accepted in American society, not only in America’s liberal coastal areas but even in the broad and broadly conservative heartland. The Senate in Washington has finished that business; with a clear majority, it lifted the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military.

The U.S. military has, in fact, proven to be not only the instrument of social change in the United States. Ironically, this conservative American bastion has traditionally been the spearhead of social reform.

After racial discrimination was abolished among the ranks by executive order, it lost its grip in other parts of society. Then women in jet fighters heralded new opportunities for gender equality in the civilian world as well.

Overturning the ban on homosexuals serving in the military will accelerate the end of discrimination against homosexuals in general. In this respect, the Senate’s action can’t be praised highly enough. It’s a significant indication that, despite a sclerotic political system that obstructs change, the country is still capable of enacting internal reforms.