FGB, Part I

Light blogging today -- still busy, still running on short sleep. This'll probably spill over to tomorrow.

DADT: Another Nail in the Coffin

This report, from AP, reveals something that the rest of the world has known for -- well, years and years:

"Evidence shows that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline or cohesion," the officers states.

To support its contention, the panel points to the British and Israeli militaries, where it says gay people serve openly without hurting the effectiveness of combat operations.

Here's an article (somewhat dated, from 2001) about the "dangers" other countries have discovered in allowing gays to serve openly, which is to say, none.

In country after country, the idea of allowing gay people to serve openly in the armed forces triggers dire warnings from military leaders. But once a gay ban is lifted, those same leaders are shocked and relieved to find that nothing bad happens: The seemingly explosive issue is, in reality, a dud - a bomb that never goes off.

“We find literally the same thing again and again, which is people report the lifting of a gay ban as a non-event,” says political scientist Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“It has no effect on unit cohesion. It has no effect on military performance. It has no effect on recruitment. It has no effect on any of the indicators of military capability,” adds Belkin, whose center has thoroughly studied the impact of having lifted the gay bans in Britain, Israel, Canada and Australia.

It's not just a handful of countries that allow gays to serve openly, either -- all NATO members except the US and Turkey (and Turkey may have changed its policy by now) allow gays to serve, and the EU insists on non-discrimination policies.

Good Service

Local Illinois wingnut Peter LaBarbera has started making these really neat lists of pro-gay organizations and now, gay-supportive corporations. Jeremy Hooper calls it a service to the gay community, and I have to agree. Hooper has posted the list of companies with suggestions for use.

I'm sure LaBarbera will be happy to learn that he's finally done some good in the world.

Not Out, Not Proud

Read this post. It's long, but it's powerful. It's also the reality for more of us than we like to think about.

Real Christians

Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin has a report on California UMC churches and their reaction to Proposition 8. Expect this sort of thing to take on a higher and higher profile: the bigots who claim to speak for Christians don't, and as I've been saying for a long, long time, it's the real Christians who have to take them on.

The support of the state’s United Methodists is most welcome. As more houses of worship declare their opposition to exclusionary political efforts, this debate becomes less a battle between the Holy and the Profane and becomes better understood as an effort by a few to introduce discrimination into the state’s constitution.

And that holds nationally, across the board on gay issues.