The Marine Corps Continue To Want To Be Seen As The Few And The Proud But Not The Openly Gay

Tuesday, November 30tth, the Pentagon will release the results of a study it commissioned, surveying 400,000 active-duty and reservists on the effects of repealing the policy that prohibits openly gay service members, and although an estimated 70-percent of those polled hold no perceived objection to reversing the ban, the survey found resistance in one branch of the armed services – the Marines – an attitude that takes its cue from the Marine Corps head, the Associated Press reports. Commandant General James Amos, who said recently in San Diego that “There is nothing more intimate than combat and I want to make that point crystal clear. There is nothing more intimate that young men and young women, and when you’re talking infantry, we’re talking our young men laying out, sleeping alongside of one another, and sharing death and fear and the loss of their brothers. So I don’t know what the effect of that would be on unit cohesion.” 24 year old Sergeant David Trentham echoed his commander’s sentiments, saying that permitting gays to serve openly could create the possibilities of distractions for units, saying “I just think it would complicate things .If you have two homosexuals in a unit., they could have a relationships and if they broke it off, is that going to cause the mission to fail because they are having problems?” Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, however, a Marine corporal, honourably discharged in 2008 under the “don’t ask, don’t tell “policy says that the demanding standards, call to duty, and strong sense of comradeship are what attracted him to enlist. “My calling has always been service, and I wanted to go into the best of the branches, the one that showed the most pride, the most challenge,” he said, adding that if and when the policy is repealed he intends to re-enlist. He also underlined that the Marine officers can lead by example if and when the ban is lifted, saying “There’s so much discipline that is instilled in our Marines that if they see the senior officers saying this is not acceptable then they are going to say this in not unacceptable.” Gary Solis, a Marine veteran who teaches the law of war at Georgetown University law Center, says that the majority of Marines are not bothered by the idea of serving with openly gay men and women, but that others maintain the misconception that openly gay Marines will lack the aggressiveness of their straight comrades, Solis saying “Of course, we know none of that’s true about homosexuals. There have always been homosexuals in the Marine Corps, but when you acknowledge it openly, that’s a different thing. There are many Marines, particularly the older, more senior Marines, who don’t want to see that image diluted.”