Bigotry in uniform can't stand

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It doesn't do any good to scream at someone and tell him he's wrong. Yell, and a wall gets built. Deride, and it's the same thing. You have to be reasonable, understanding and incredibly patient if you ever intend to enlighten a person and lead him to change his mind.

It would, therefore, be stupid and counterproductive for me to make any blanket negative statement about heterosexual men.

It would be unfair, too, because, let's face it: not all heterosexual men are narrow-minded, bigoted jerks. That's just the impression you get from television and from reading the newspapers and from going to hockey and football games and from listening to men talk to other men.

But you know how it is. You musn't believe everything you read, right? And as far as what men say? All people say things they don't mean. They talk to fit in, to make an impression, to have something - anything - to say. So, just because some big-mouthed guy makes a few unsavory comments about a good-looking woman walking past, or an effeminate man, or a teen-age girl, it would be a mistake to leap to the conclusion that because he's an ill-mannered pig, all men who resemble him in any way are ill-mannered pigs, too.

That's how stereotypes get started.

So, now we have this all straightened out.

Just because a guy is heterosexual doesn't mean he's an unredeemable lout. Just because a guy is homosexual doesn't pigeonhole him either.

But now I have a few questions for the true-blue, I'm-a-bigot-and-proud-of-it homophobes in the audience.

What is with you guys? What is this overreaction to gays in the military? Do you straight men in uniform think you're so attractive that gay recruits won't be able to keep their hands off you? Are you worried that they'll start to cross-dress, demand their own battalion, request a separate section in military parades?

What is the burning issue here? Do you not realize that gay men who join the military are not like gay men you see walking down the street in Provincetown in high heels. They aren't the make-love-not-war bunch. Nor are they part of the unconventional Act-Up crowd.

They want to play soldier just like you, go on forced marches before dawn, take apart weapons, crawl in the mud under barbed wire, hold their breath in a gas chamber, play life and death with hand grenades.

So what is it that you hate about them? In almost all respects they are exactly like you. Why are you so threatened by them? And don't you dare throw the Bible at me unless it's, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Because that is the second most important commandment, and it overrides all the others.

"Love your neighbor as yourself." This was a direct order - Matthew 22:39. Not hate your neighbor and mock him and castigate him for what he is.

Do you hate homosexuals because you believe they are less worthy? Do you believe that you are intrinsically a better person? Do you think that your dreams and your lusts, what ever they may be - women, power, booze, money - are more justified and, therefore, more acceptable than theirs? Do you truly believe that a man cannot be a good man, and a homosexual, too?

I've heard you degrade men who love other men. All my life, I've heard you mock them with your words and your imitative lisps and your pathetic little jokes. At cocktail parties and in small crowds these put-downs always get a laugh.

Now the world's laughing, not with us, but at us. And why shouldn't it? Here we are, a country in debt, our schools failing, our cities dying, drugs everywhere, kids killing kids, children without parents, families without homes, a generation without dreams. We're up to our eyeballs and drowning in trouble.

And whether gays belong in the military is the premier issue of the day?

When are we going to stop categorizing, dividing, separating and stereotyping people? When are we going to pull together in this country, instead of pulling each other apart?

The military has long been in the business of controlling behavior. It does this well. It teaches its men and women how to act and how to react, while in uniform and while on duty.

Off duty, the sexual behavior of its members, as long as it poses no threat to the country and as long as it's between consenting adults, is none of the military's, or anybody’s, business.