Anyway. Charles Moskos. Sociologist, first generation son of Greek immigrants, drafted ino the US Army after graduation from Princeton, where, as a Combat Engineer, he published his first article, "Has the Army Killed Jim Crow?"
While he studied and wrote on other topics, he was most well-known as a "Military Sociologist", which I was surprised to learn was a career option, and I still wonder whether there were or are any others...
Anyway, I first learned of him in an article in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on the on-going, perennial debate over reviving the draft, something he advocated:
Dr. Moskos attained his greatest impact when he proposed the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy as a compromise to the Clinton Administration's desire to lift the ban on homosexuality in the US Military.Dr. Moskos also advocated restoring the military draft. He insisted that enforcing a shared military experience for Americans of different classes, races and economic backgrounds forged a sense of common purpose.
"This shared experience helped instill in those who served, as in the national culture generally, a sense of unity and moral seriousness that we would not see again -- until after September 11, 2001," he wrote in a November 2001 article in Washington Monthly (with Paul Glastris). "It's a shame that it has taken terrorist attacks to awaken us to the reality of our shared national fate."
In 2000, Moskos told academic journal Lingua Franca that he felt the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy will be gone within five to ten years. He went on to debunk the unit cohesion argument, the most frequent rationale given for the continued exclusion of gay service members from the U.S. military, instead arguing that homosexuals should be banned due to the "modesty rights" of heterosexuals, saying:While the military has made great advances in providing private accommodations to the troops stateside, overseas--and especially while deployed to combat zones and other hardship areas!--separate facilities are still necessary for females and males, and "gang showers" are still common. Homosexuals may well feel that heterosexual embarrassment at showering in front of homosexuals is unwarranted, but it still exists, and I refer them to my earlier post re: the young troop who was outraged to be told that he did not, in fact, have any right to beat the crap out of his roommate if said roommate was gay.Moskos comments were met with outrage by gay activists and Northwestern University students who argued that his fear of being ogled in the shower was not sufficient justification for denying equal rights to gay men and lesbians.
- "I don't care about that...I should not be forced to shower with a woman. I should not be forced to shower with a gay [man]."
While it is very common to have a single sleeping tent for Combat Support units in the field--in my experience, everyone manages to dress in their sleeping bag--once shower facilities are established they are single sex.
Perhaps Dr. Moskos should have phrased the question differently: Should a woman be required to share a shower with men? Would that be the same thing as forcing straight males to shower with gay ones? What infrastructure and other changes would be needed to provide troops in the field with individual shower stalls? Would Congress fund that?
In the opinion of this veteran, Dr. Moskos' provided an example to academia that it may have admired vis a vis the influence he on policy and policy makers, but they completely missed the point, to me: An academic who not only was intimately familiar with the military, but who sought out, advocated, and enjoyed contact with enlisted personnel.
Unheard of.
No comments:
Post a Comment