Will Next President Give Green Light To Gays In The Military?

A better question is why would anyone care?

Most gays I have known have better sense than to join up after the last 7 years.

Though I have no hard proof of this, I would bet a large sum of money that gays, in general, are smarter than heterosexuals and while they may be just as patriotic, they know war crimes when they see them.

When people think of the holocaust and Germany under Hitler, they usually think of the Jews, but many others know that the gays were persecuted and murdered as well. Would those who were the victims of a madman fight for another and commit the horrors required?

What gay or lesbian person would want to join up?

This presidential campaign has seen plenty of platitudes on matters of national security but precious little real discussion about what America's armed forces will look like in the years to come. There are extraordinary challenges ahead, not the least of which is rebuilding a military utterly spent by the war in Iraq. As for the people who would be commander in chief, we know that all the remaining candidates want to defeat terrorism and keep America strong. In other words, we don't know much at all.

There are many facets to the issue of our military's future, but for the moment I want to discuss just one: whether the ban on gays serving in the military will finally be repealed. Of the 26 countries in the NATO alliance, only Portugal, Greece, Turkey—and the United States—ban gays from serving in the military. Other countries have reported no problems integrating gay service members into their military. This is true even in Israel, where they take military matters very, very seriously.

When he ran for president in 1992, Bill Clinton pledged to repeal the ban, perhaps not realizing how much opposition it would engender from both inside and outside the military. When he tried to make good on his promise, a firestorm erupted, one of the most remarkable elements of which was the fact that all over the media senior active-duty personnel were quoted as opposing the policy decision their commander in chief was considering. (Historical fun fact: One of the most prominent advocates of repealing the ban and letting gays serve openly was conservative hero Barry Goldwater.)

The resolution the administration came up with was "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which is a deceptive moniker for what was an extremely minor shift. The only "not asking" that took place was that recruits would no longer be forced to attest to their red-blooded heterosexuality before they joined the service. The rest of the policy remained largely unchanged: You could still be kicked out of the military for any "homosexual conduct," which is not limited to sex but includes letting other people know you're gay.

The result was unsurprising: Gay soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines felt no less required to hide their identity, and nearly every day someone was being kicked out of the military because of their sexuality.

But then something interesting happened: The exigencies of war made booting gays out of the military a little less appealing. Discharges under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" peaked at 1,227 in 2001 and have since declined rapidly, numbering only 612 in 2006. That's still plenty, of course. But there are also plenty of gay service members whose sexuality is known to their units, and whose commanding officers have decided that they're going to pretend they don't know in order to avoid losing a valuable member of their team.

John McCain, you will be shocked to learn, thinks that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should remain in place, while both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have said they'll move to repeal the ban if they become president. If a Democrat is elected in the fall, he or she will have one advantage Bill Clinton didn't in moving to repeal the ban: the support of a clear majority of the American people. In 1993 the public was closely split on the issue, with supporters of the ban usually outnumbering opponents by a small margin. But today, between 60 percent and 65 percent of people tell surveyors that gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military (see for example Gallup or Pew).

What happened? America became a different country in the last 15 years. In 1992, 42 percent of Americans told a CBS News/New York Times poll that they personally knew a gay person. In 2004, a Los Angeles Times poll asked a similar question and found that the number was 69 percent. Was there some sort of explosion of gayness in the interim? Extraordinarily successful efforts on the part of the Gay Recruitment Agency? Of course not. What occurred was a cultural shift: rising visibility for gays in popular culture gave more and more individuals the license and courage to come out to their friends, families, and co-workers.

So the general public might be supportive of repealing the ban, but what about members of the military themselves? The evidence is spotty, but it suggests that resistance to removing the ban is more likely to be found in the military's upper ranks, whose members are older. For instance, the quadrennial National Annenberg Election Survey found a stark split in their 2004 survey: While a majority of officers and their families opposed allowing gays to serve, a majority of enlisted personnel supported lifting the ban. The direction in which opinion within the military might be headed was suggested by another finding: "On another issue that had once divided the armed forces, the military sample resoundingly approved the work of women in the service. Seventy-four percent said they performed as well as the men they served with, 10 percent said they did worse than men, and 7 percent said they did better than men."

But even at the top, opinions are beginning to change. Last January, Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, wrote in The New York Times, "Last year I held a number of meetings with gay soldiers and marines, including some with combat experience in Iraq. … These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers. … I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces."

When you ask proponents of the ban why it should remain in place, they almost never say that gay service members aren't capable of doing their jobs. Instead, they argue that the reason we can't let gay people serve is because of straight people. Being around their gay comrades would make them feel all, you know, funny. The result would be an inevitable decline in "unit cohesion."

Of course, "unit cohesion" can be harmed by any number of things—for instance, if one of the unit's members is a jerk. But the unit cohesion argument is an updated form of the same claim that was made before Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces. White soldiers just wouldn't tolerate blacks working, eating, and sleeping next to them, it was said. And the public, too, wanted to keep the races separate: A 1948 Gallup poll found that 60 percent of the public was against the idea of desegregating the army.

Today, our reaction to those poll numbers is to say, too bad. The moral wrong of segregation was not mitigated by the fact that undoing that wrong would make many people uncomfortable. The identical logic applies to the ban on gay people serving in the military: It is simply wrong to ban a certain class of Americans from serving in the military when their membership in that class does nothing to affect their performance. The fact that some other members of the military don't like them being there makes no difference. There are probably some anti-Semites in the military, too, but we don't prohibit Jews from serving because of it.

What history will say about the public figures of our time depends on what they do when confronted by moral questions like this one. Did they take the position history judged to be the right one? And did they have the courage to walk to the side of justice when there were political costs? The record of the Democratic Party on issues of gay rights has been tepid and timid, staying a step or two behind public opinion as it evolves in a steadily progressive direction. But at least on this question, the Democrats who would be president have arrived in the right spot. It may not have been discussed much in this campaign, but the ban will be repealed, if not in the next presidential term then not long thereafter. When it does happen, there will be another fight—perhaps not as bitter and laced with open bigotry as the last—but a fight nonetheless. And history will note where every politician stood.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Presidential Brain Function: Should we Know Before Pull The Lever

The following is from an email I received from a colleague this week. It brought to mind arguments and conversations I have had with friends, family and colleagues for several years. I am in full agreement with Dr Amen on the topic of presidential brain health or the lack thereof and not only our right to know about a candidate's brain health, as we have a right to know about his/her physical health, but our duty, as citizens, to demand such knowledge, for the very reasons that Daniel points out.

I've learned a few things in my discussions with numerous people on this subject:

People who have a low level of education or tend to be right-wing and/or who show signs of pathology, themselves, tend to have no use for psychiatrists/psychologists and "don't believe in psychiatry/psychology," whatever that means.

People with a high education level or tend to be to the left of center or moderate, politically do "believe in psychiatry," and/or have either seen a mental health professional at some time in their lives or knows someone who has.

When I have put forward the notion that presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates, for that matter, should have to take a full battery of psychological tests and have every type of brain imaging that we know is diagnostic or gives us a picture of the brain from which we can actually draw conclusions about the brain-function of the candidate, right-wingers usually run, screaming from such an idea. Some will hang around to argue that psychology is not a science and cannot be relied upon in such a way; as in deciding about something as important as electing a president.

I find that a jaw dropping argument, but that's just me. Everyone has a right to his/her opinion. But I can't help but find it highly interesting, if not amusing, that the very people who have, for years, diagnosed, mostly without a license to do so, an entire group of people (liberals) as loony, crazy, psychotic, etc. either don't believe in psychiatry or psychology or don't believe that candidates for president should be tested for mental health or the lack thereof.

People who do "believe in psychiatry/psychology" agree that we should and could find a way to test candidates that is exploitation-proof. They also believe it would be like trying to move a mountain to make candidates submit to mental health exams just as they do physical health exams and I'm afraid I have to agree with them on that point.

After all, while people who flip burgers and work in convenience stores must submit to the "piss police" in order to be employed, we, the people, have not a clue what types of drugs, if any, the top two officials in our government are taking. Does that make sense to anyone?

As we know, the president and this vice president are very powerful people. They could quite literally destroy the world or make large parts of it uninhabitable in less than an hour. They could declare martial law and suspend the constitution for years, should they feel threatened by the people for any reason, like with impeachment for example, and I, for one, have not seen anyone in Washington willing and with the courage to stop such an act.

Actually, I began thinking about this subject during the Clinton administration. I, and most of my friends, knew that Clinton had had a problem with womanizing. Who didn't know? What everyone who voted for him should have known was that under great and/or prolonged stress he might well return to it. What none of us could have possibly known was that the man was going to be investigated constantly from day one; that he would have the constant stress of one congressional investigation on top of another and a special prosecutor dogging his every step. The Clintons were the most investigated couple in American history, with the possible exception of the Rosenbergs and that is stress, whether one is guilty of anything or not. Add to the stress of being investigated for what amounted to nothing all those years, the normal stress of being the President of the United States and we have a situation which would almost surely have led to a relapse into his favorite "coping mechanism" and a character defect he had struggled with for years and one about which we all knew, unless we were living in a cave during the 1992 election..

I have always wondered why anyone was surprised that Clinton slipped back into his old ways?

The main problem with all of that was that it distracted the country from something far more important: Osama bin Laden. This was a man with $ millions who had bombed our embassies, our ship and declared war on the U.S., but many, many Americans had not a clue who the hell he was on the morning of 9/11/01. Why? Because the news media, in particular, and the press was fixated on Clinton's sex life. It all seems so childish and silly now, doesn't it?

After the last nearly two Bush administrations, anyone who isn't concerned about the mental health of our two top leaders either hasn't been paying attention or is as whacko as the Neocons, themselves, also known as the "effing crazies." (Just ask Colin Powell)

It doesn't take a professional to see that there is something seriously wrong with George W Bush and Dick Cheney. Nevertheless, the mental health professionals in this country and other countries have probably been the most alarmed for the longest period of time.

It is time to seriously discuss the importance of the degree of brain health in our leaders and our right to know before we exercise our duty to vote.

If there is anything we all should have learned in these last years it is that we can not afford, as a nation, to have leaders who with questionable mental health, not to mention psychopathology recognizable for miles.

GETTING INSIDE THEIR HEADS

By Daniel G. Amen MD
LA TIMES Op-Ed
December 5, 2007

What do Rudy Giuliani’s messy personal life, John McCain’s temper and Hillary Clinton’s inability to seem authentic have in common? Maybe nothing. They just may be overblown issues in the otherwise normal lives of candidates under the political microscope. Such symptoms, however, may mean a lot — such as evidence of underlying brain dysfunction. Sometimes people with messy personal lives have low prefrontal cortex activity associated with poor judgment; sometimes people with temper problems have brain damage and impulse control problems; sometimes people who struggle with authenticity have trouble really seeing things from someone else’s perspective.

Is the brain health of a presidential candidate a fair topic in an election year? Certainly Dick Cheney’s heart condition wasn’t off-limits in 2000, nor have questions about McCain’s age been considered out of bounds. The White House issues a complete medical history of the president each year — detailing everything from his seasonal allergic rhinitis to his adenomatous colon polyps. Clearly we care about the health outlook for our elected leaders. Should we go so far as to do brain scans? Of candidates for the Oval Office? Some people might consider discussing brain health a ridiculous idea. Not me.

As a neuropsychiatrist and brain-imaging expert, I want our elected leaders to be some of the “brain healthiest people” in the land. How do you know about the brain health of a presidential candidate unless you look? The brain is involved in everything humans do: how we think, how we feel, how we get along with others, how we negotiate, how we pay attention in meetings and how we turn away the advances of White House interns or decide to invade a country based on contradictory intelligence.

Three of the last four presidents have shown clear brain pathology. President Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease was evident during his second term in office. Nonelected people were covering up his forgetfulness and directing the country’s business. Few people knew it, but we had a national crisis. Brain studies have been shown to predict Alzheimer’s five to nine years before people have their first symptoms.

President Clinton’s moral lapses and problems with bad judgment and excitement-seeking behavior — indicative of problems in the prefrontal cortex — eventually led to his impeachment and a poisonous political divisiveness in the U.S. The prefrontal cortex houses the brain’s supervisor, involved with conscience, forethought, planning, attention span and judgment.

One could argue that our current president’s struggles with language and emotional rigidity are symptoms of temporal lobe pathology. The temporal lobes, underneath your temples and behind your eyes, are involved with language, mood stability, reading social cues and emotional flexibility.

A national leader with brain problems can potentially cost millions of people their lives. Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein give us recent historical examples. Both of Milosevic’s parents committed suicide, he had serious bouts of depression and reportedly drank heavily — all signs that point to brain problems. He was found to be unreasonable and unreliable in negotiations and heartless as a political leader. Hussein was described as paranoid and without empathy, also symptoms pointing to poor brain function. His mother suffered severe bouts of depression and attempted suicide while pregnant with him, which is known to affect a baby’s developing brain. He was physically and emotionally abused by his stepfather. All of these stresses must have been involved in shaping his paranoid brain into a mind that could torture dissenters, murder relatives and launch chemical attacks that killed thousands.

Functional scans, such as Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, provide a window into the brain. Doctors can now see healthy or dysfunctional brain patterns, much as we can assess the strength of a heart or measure hormone levels, and recognize trouble. All doctors might not agree on the interpretation, but there is a growing body of scientific literature establishing what these scans mean, such as a Attention Deficit Disorder or a predisposition for Alzheimer’s.

Ensuring that our president has a healthy brain may be more than an interesting topic of conversation. It can be important information to put into the election equation. A president with brain problems could wreak havoc on the U.S. and the world at large. Maybe we shouldn’t leave the health of our president’s brain to chance. We have the tools, shouldn’t we look?

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.