{"content":{"sharePage":{"page":0,"digests":[{"id":"7400933","dateCreated":"1227919467","smartDate":"Nov 28, 2008","userCreated":{"username":"09shik","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/09shik","imageUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ciamaccagov7.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/7400933"},"dateDigested":1531976891,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Information plz","description":"How were your thanksgivings? I hope they were relaxing :). I need to prepare both sides of the debate, but to do so, I need your information. so plz hurry up! Thx :)
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\nPeace,
\nKelvin","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[{"id":"7422085","body":"So I am having an embarrassingly hard time getting the wiki thing to work, but i think i may have finally gotten it under control. If you need me to do something in the future, I check my school email all the time, (haha and not wikispace inbox, oopsie)but here is the current event and then a buttload of information... there are charts, but they dont copy-paste so it seems. ALso, youprobly dont want to read it, so argument outline:
\n-$20 million has been spent "researching" the sexual orientation of army members; could be better spent
\n- Don't Ask Don't Tell validates the homophobia of many soldiers, promoting an inefficient and awkward work environment.
\n-21% of soldiers discharged under Don't Ask Don't Tell were women, yet only 13% of soldiers are women; used as a sexist tool to harass women
\nYAY, I'll get you some more bullet-points soon
\n-leah!
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\nLawmaker: 'Don't ask-don't tell' can be repealed in year
\n\u2022 Story Highlights
\n\u2022 Bill would allow gays to openly serve in the U.S. military
\n\u2022 During run for presidency, Barack Obama said he would repeal "don't ask-don't tell"
\n\u2022 Bill sponsor: New policy could pass in first year of Obama administration
\nFrom Jamie McIntyre
\nCNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent
\nWASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military's "don't ask-don't tell" policy could be overturned in the first year of President-elect Barack Obama's administration, according to the lead sponsor of a bill that would repeal the law.
\nObama has pledged to lift the ban on gays serving openly in the U.S. military.
\nA spokesman for Obama's transition office would not comment for this story, but two months ago, Obama suggested he would move cautiously, telling the Philadelphia Gay News he would first get the military on board.
\n"Although I have consistently said I would repeal 'don't ask-don't tell,' I believe that the way to do it is to make sure that we are working through processes, getting the Joint Chiefs of Staff clear in terms of what our priorities are going to be," Obama told the newspaper.
\nInstituted in 1993, the policy ended the military's practice of asking potential service members if they are gay, but requires the dismissal of openly gay service members.
\nA bill to replace the law with a policy that would allow gays to openly serve has 149 co-sponsors in the U.S. House, including Ellen Tauscher, D-California. Tauscher said that with a new administration, the timing is right to try to pass the bill.
\n"The key here is to get bills that pass the House and the Senate, that we can get to President-elect Obama to sign, and I think that we can do that, certainly, the first year of the administration," Tauscher told CNN.
\nGay rights advocates say it's important for Obama to avoid the approach used by the Clinton administration.
\nPresident Clinton initially promised to repeal the military's then-complete ban on gays with an executive order. But the plan roiled Pentagon brass -- including then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell -- and provoked a fierce backlash from conservatives in Congress.
\nCongress stripped Clinton of his power to change the policy and forced him to accept the "don't ask-don't tell" compromise -- a law that can be repealed only by Congress.
\nBut after 15 years and four wars, attitudes in the Pentagon -- and among the public -- have changed.
\nA Washington Post\/ABC News poll this summer found 75 percent of Americans support allowing gays to serve openly, compared to only 45 percent in 1993.
\nRetired Adm. Charles Larson, the former head of the Naval Academy, heads a list of more than 100 retired U.S. military leaders who have signed a statement calling for an end the policy, according to the Palm Center at the University of California-Santa Barbara. The think tank has studied issues involving gays in the military for the past decade.
\nCNN's Laurie Ure contributed to this report.
\nAll AboutMilitary and Defense Policy \u2022 Barack Obama
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\nLinks referenced within this article
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\nMilitary and Defense Policy
\nhttp:\/\/topics.edition.cnn.com\/topics\/Military_and_Defense_Policy<\/a>
\nBarack Obama
\nhttp:\/\/topics.edition.cnn.com\/topics\/Barack_Obama<\/a>
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\nNew Military Culture
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\nDo women, blacks and homosexuals get fair treatment? April 26, 1996 \u2022 Volume 6, Issue 16
\nBy Craig Donegan
\nIntroduction
\nIn the last quarter-century, the number of African-Americans and women in the armed forces has skyrocketed. There are more black officers than ever; women now hold scores of military jobs once reserved for men; and President Clinton's \u201cDon't Ask, Don't Tell \u201d policy has given homosexuals official sanction to serve in the military. The changes have subjected the military to what have been called the most significant cultural shocks since President Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948. The role changes have been accompanied by reports of extremist activity on military bases, a surge in sexual harassment cases and a fierce battle over the right of homosexuals to serve. Some observers are asking whether the military is dealing fairly with minorities, women and gays.
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\nOverview
\nJim Burmeister seemed to blame blacks for his disappointments. His upcoming murder trial may reveal what motivated him. This much police know: His dream of becoming a paratrooper with the famed 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg quickly faded. Grounded by an injury, ridiculed by other recruits, Burmeister drifted into a small group of racist, neo-Nazi skinheads at the huge base in Fayetteville, N.C.
\nGroup members tacked up swastikas in their barracks rooms and sewed Nazi symbols on their civilian jackets. At least one sported a spiderweb tattoo, supposedly showing he had killed an African-American or a homosexual.
\nLast Dec. 6, according to authorities, Burmeister announced it was time to earn a spiderweb of his own. Shortly after midnight, cruising on an unpaved Fayetteville street, Burmeister and two buddies spotted a hapless African-American couple out for a stroll. After passing Jackie Burden, 27, and Michael James, 36, the trio turned around and cruised by again. Burmeister and Pvt. Malcolm Wright got out of the car, police say.
\nThen, Burmeister allegedly shot James twice at point-blank range. Burden ran, but Burmeister shot her in the back and then three times in the head. Within 24 hours, the three soldiers had been arrested and charged with murder.
\nThe shootings raised an obvious question about the extent of extremism in the armed forces. But there was a deeper question: Is the extremism somehow related to the sweeping changes that have transformed the military in recent times?
\nIn the last quarter-century, the number of African-Americans and women in the armed forces has skyrocketed. Indeed, there are more black officers than ever; women now hold scores of military jobs once reserved for men; and President Clinton's \u201c Don't Ask, Don't Tell \u201d policy has given homosexuals official sanction to serve in the armed forces.
\nSome observers say the changes have subjected the armed forces to the most significant cultural shocks since President Harry S Truman ordered the armed forces to desegregate in 1948. And they are asking whether the military is up to the task of dealing fairly with minorities, women and homosexuals.
\nIn response to the Fayetteville murders, Secretary of the Army Togo D. West Jr. ordered an investigation into possible extremist activities on Army bases around the world. West reported on March 21 that the task force had surveyed 28 representative bases and found minimal extremist activity. Moreover, the task force reported, most soldiers think extremism is incompatible with military service and that it lowers morale and should not be permitted.
\n\u201c Targeting of active-duty Army soldiers [by extremist organizations] is simply not happening in any significant way,\u201d West said. Other observers agree that there are few extremists in the ranks.
\n\u201cI don't think it's any worse in the military than with any other group in society,\u201d says Joe T. Roy, director of the Militia Task Force for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. \u201cThe issue is, what will be the military's response to this problem.\u201d
\nWest has ordered the Army to clarify and strengthen rules that govern participation in extremist organizations. * He also has said the Army will revise regulations to make it easier for officers to keep tabs on off-duty soldiers.
\n\u201c[Most soldiers] are clear on the undesirability of extremism,\u201d West said, \u201cbut they're not so clear . . . on the Army's attitude about it.\u201d
\nTo prevent extremists from joining the military, West said the Army will explore possible screening procedures. We need to \u201cbetter inform ourselves as to whether we're bringing in an extremist - whether there is something we should know that we should be screening out,\u201d he said.
\nThe North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which conducted its own probe of North Carolina military bases in the wake of the shootings, welcomed West's response. *
\n\u201cWe were comforted that we did not find successful organizing activity by racists on bases, but we got a very strong sense that they would like to,\u201d says chapter President Kelly Alexander.
\nSince the murders, Fort Bragg officials have counseled, disciplined or denied re-enlistment to at least 22 skinheads, according to the Army. But to some observers, the presence of even a few extremists in the Army is disturbing for an institution that began integrating a half-century ago.
\nThat legacy began in the early 1940s, when civil rights leaders demanded an end to segregated Army units. As the Army took its first halting steps toward becoming colorblind, other reformers began seeking equality for women and homosexuals.
\nMilitary sociologist Charles Moskos of Northwestern University contends that the need for military effectiveness, not social reform, has created equal opportunities for African-Americans in the armed forces. \u201cOverlooking this fact,\u201d he writes, \u201cpolitical leaders and scholars have come to think of the military as a social laboratory, in which charged debates over gender roles and homosexuality and national service can not only be addressed but possibly resolved.\u201d
\nIn today's military, says Carolyn V. Prevatte, executive director of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), women face many of the same obstacles that blacks confronted during the 1970s, when racial disturbances broke out throughout the armed services. At that time, the military had been racially integrated for nearly 25 years. Today, the integration of women into the military is just reaching its 25th anniversary.
\nIn some ways, however, women have yet to attain the acceptance blacks had a quarter-century ago. It is still acceptable in some military quarters for men to openly question whether women should even be allowed in the armed forces, Prevatte says. \u201cThis kind of thing affects the work environment,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt makes women feel that their male co-workers don't want them there. We have to get beyond that.\u201d
\nSome observers had expected the Persian Gulf War with Iraq to get women over that hurdle, especially after the Department of Defense (DOD) concluded that \u201cWomen performed admirably and without substantial friction or special consideration.\u201d
\nBut women are still struggling, says Juanita Firestone, a sociologist at the University of Texas, San Antonio. \u201cLetting women fly or be on ships was only a small step toward equality,\u201d she says. \u201cBut a lot of negative discussion followed those changes, particularly about women who were said to have gotten pregnant to avoid the war.\u201d Until women are welcomed in all military jobs, including ground combat, she says, they will remain second-class citizens in a male- dominated military culture.
\nBut according to Moskos, \u201cmost enlisted women don't want to go into combat.\u201d In the all-volunteer military, in fact, few recruits seek combat roles. Women, in particular, join for the education and job-training benefits, the travel or \u201cto avoid marrying a jerk,\u201d Moskos says. Most of them have strong ties to America's blue-collar culture. \u201cThey're coming out of more traditionalist roles,\u201d Moskos says, \u201cand they don't follow the feminist agenda.\u201d
\nBut that does not mean they accept sexual harassment, says Firestone. They take harassment seriously because it is one of the clearest symbols of women's inequality in the military.
\nIf sexual harassment bothers military women, it is a nightmare for homosexuals, says Michelle M. Benecke, co-director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN). This is particularly true, she says, because of how the services enforce the Clinton administration's policy toward homosexuals in the military. Put into effect in 1994, \u201c Don't Ask, Don't Tell \u201d allows homosexuals to serve if they keep their sexual orientation private. * But Benecke says the military routinely undermines the policy. According to SLDN, the three services investigated and discharged 21 percent more homosexuals in 1995 than in 1994, many of whom were women.
\n\u201cThe DOD's own figures show that 21 percent of those discharged under the gay policy are women although they make up only 13 percent of the active forces,\u201d says SLDN Co-Director C. Dixon Osburn. \u201cLesbian baiting is used as a tool to harass women and to root them out of the service,\u201d Benecke adds.
\n\u201cI would say that's intolerable if that's the case,\u201d says John Luddy, an aide to Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., who serves on the Armed Services Committee staff. \u201cStill, we should not force an unnatural situation by putting 18- and 19-year-old women or openly gay soldiers together with heterosexual men in forward, austere environments.\u201d
\nSome observers say, however, that the military could better use the time and money it spends dogging homosexuals to ferret out extremists. \u201cThe military has overreacted to the one while not reacting strongly enough to the other,\u201d says Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. \u201cWe've spent $20 million investigating gays, even calling up mothers and fathers to ask about their children's sexuality. We should be more worried about the signs of fascism, of soldiers with swastikas in their barracks.\u201d
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\nAs the armed forces struggle with the changing military culture, these are some of the questions being asked:
\nAre race relations in the military deteriorating?
\nDuring the Vietnam War, military race relations were severely strained. Many observers blamed the problem on draft deferments that enabled many middle-class and affluent whites to avoid the service. As a result, the Army had a disproportionate number of poor and minority personnel, and the high casualty rates among blacks during the early years of the war created an explosive situation.
\nIn the late 1970s, after the war ended, the all-volunteer military came into its own, and race relations began a decade of improvement, prompted in part by a new Army initiative on sensitivity training.
\n\u201cSome of the most recent research data seem to show that race relations have improved,\u201d says Mary Katzenstein, an associate professor of government and women's studies at Cornell University. \u201cBut it worries me when I hear scholars praise the military for being out in front of all other institutions in trying to eliminate racism, because that invites the military to be too complacent. A lot of observers would agree that there still is a very long way to go.\u201d
\nThe NAACP's Alexander shares her concern. \u201cAssumptions about a high degree of conviviality among the races in the military are not warranted when you do a close investigation,\u201d he says. During the relatively placid 1980s, he explains, military and civilian leaders were lulled into a false belief that race relations in the military were stable. As a result, little attention was paid to what was going on among the troops. It took the Fayetteville shootings to focus attention on the problems.
\nPart of the problem, Alexander says, was a poor system for reporting trouble. Even when soldiers reported problems, he says, they often got inadequate responses. \u201cDuring our investigation, we found that commanders on one base solved the problem of racist graffiti in a bathroom stall by removing the partitions that separate the toilets,\u201d he says. \u201cThat's treating the symptom. It does nothing to change the graffiti writer's opinions.\u201d
\nThe general increase in racial and economic anxiety in civilian life is partly to blame for the tension in the military, Katzenstein says. And continued personnel cutbacks in the armed forces will only lead to more job competition, and more tension, she adds.
\n\u201cThe percentage of racist individuals in the military has probably been enhanced by a more frustrated ilk of youth enlisting these days,\u201d says the poverty law center's Roy. \u201cBut overall, the military is no different in this than any other segment of society.\u201d
\nDavid Segal, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, argues that the military remains a step ahead of civilian society in matters of race. \u201cThere are more opportunities for African- Americans in the military - especially women - than in the civilian economy,\u201d he says.
\nMost women in the middle and higher ranks among non-commissioned officers are black, he says. As a result, the military has remained a magnet for minorities in general, but minority women in particular. \u201cThey're seeing the military as a more colorblind and more gender- blind employer than most others that are available to them,\u201d he says.
\nKatzenstein disagrees. \u201cIf you look at the data about fairness and promotions, and when you realize how under-represented women of color are in the military academies,\u201d she says, \u201cyou see there is a lot of unhappiness among African-Americans.\u201d
\nOverall, however, the opportunities for minorities to excel are greater in the military than anywhere else, Moskos says. He notes that recruits compete on a level playing field during basic training; that a white officer's advancement can be stopped dead by any display of racism that shows up on evaluation reports; and that the race- relations courses required by the armed forces seem to reduce racist behavior.
\n\u201cObviously, a level playing field is not enough,\u201d says Moskos. \u201cYou have to bring people up to standards, which the Army does with its U.S. Military Academy Prep School. It's like a 13th year of high school that brings students up to speed in math, reading and English. Blacks who enroll in it do better than the overall white population when they attend West Point.\u201d
\nRather than setting minority-recruitment quotas, the military uses the Academy Prep School to increase the overall size and quality of its minority recruiting pool, which in turn enables it to recruit more qualified blacks. This approach is seen as limiting the kind of racial tension that quotas have caused in civilian society.
\n\u201cI think a military that has some racists in it, but is filled with black leaders, is far preferable to a politically correct college campus where any kind of racist expression is prohibited, but where there are no black leaders,\u201d Moskos says. \u201cThe Army is the only place in American society where white men are routinely bossed around by blacks. Six percent of its generals and 35 percent of its first sergeants are black.\u201d
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\nShould the government retain its \u201c Don't Ask, Don't Tell \u201d policy?
\nLaunched in 1994, \u201c Don't Ask, Don't Tell \u201d was a compromise between President Clinton and military and political leaders who opposed his promise to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. The policy promises not to ask soldiers about their sexual orientation, not to investigate them for homosexuality without credible cause and to let gays and lesbians serve unless they openly reveal their homosexuality.
\nOpponents of homosexuals serving in the military say they disrupt discipline, lower morale and unit cohesion and threaten combat readiness. Supporters say they have served honorably in the military over the years and that the opposition is rooted in bigotry. Moreover, they argue, the military should reflect the civilian population, which includes gays.
\n\u201c' Don't Ask, Don't Tell ' is the worst of all possible worlds,\u201d says Brookings' Korb. \u201cIt says we're making the ban on gay soldiers less stringent when we have not. Under the current policy, they're just as hard on homosexuals as they were under the old.\u201d
\nRobert L. Maginnis, a senior policy analyst at The Family Research Council, argues that the new policy unwisely has neutered the military's traditional anti-gay rules while contradicting the law, which cleared Congress Nov. 17, 1993. \u201cThe Clinton policy is an accommodation policy,\u201d Maginnis says. \u201cThe law is an exclusion law. So what you have is an end-run by the Clinton administration around Congress. And right now Congress lacks the will to make the White House enforce the law.\u201d
\nAs far as Cornell's Katzenstein is concerned, \u201cIt would be best for the military to drop the ban altogether.\u201d Adjusting to the change would require some effort, she says, because young men are typically very nervous about their sexuality. To deal with that, the military should establish and enforce strict rules governing sexual conduct, as it has tried to do with heterosexual relations.\u201c
\n\u201cIf the military can't tell its uniformed servicemen how to behave, then the military has a problem,\u201d Katzenstein adds.
\nThe real problem, says Luddy, a former Marine rifle platoon leader, is that \u201c Don't Ask, Don't Tell \u201d undermines the military's credibility on the issue of sexuality. \u201cTo have a policy that says ' Don't Ask, Don't Tell ,' is saying that homosexuality is incompatible with military service, but we're going to officially, passively, accept it,\u201d he says. \u201cThat contributes to the corruption of a certain morality - the integrity of the service.\u201d
\n\u201cThere are very sound reasons for not allowing homosexuality in the military,\u201d he adds, \u201cand we ought to just say that.\u201d Most important among them, Luddy says, is that \u201cdistractions in combat - sexual or otherwise - get people killed.\u201d
\nSLDN's Osburn agrees that \u201c Don't Ask, Don't Tell \u201d sends mixed signals, and says he would like to see the ban abolished. It \u201chas made things as bad or worse than prior policy,\u201d he says. \u201cMany of our clients say they feel trapped. They feel they were lied to.\u201d
\nNevertheless, says Osburn, axing the policy would be a mistake because the only alternative available today is a return to exclusion. \u201cCongress will not change anytime soon,\u201d he says, \u201cso this issue will have to wend its way through the federal courts and be settled on constitutional grounds.\u201d
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\nHave women achieved greater equality in the military?
\nBeginning in the early 1970s, the military started taking many more women into the services. But does creating more positions necessarily mean greater equality? That depends, observers say, on the meaning of \u201cequality.\u201d
\n\u201cIf you measure equality in terms of the opportunity to get killed, then women are not yet equal,\u201d says Luddy, \u201cbut they are promoted at equal or faster rates than men.\u201d
\n\u201cCompared with where we started, it's almost like night and day,\u201d says Georgia Sadler, director of the Women in the Military Project at the Women's Research and Educational Institute (WREI). \u201cUntil the 1970s, the roles women played remained very limited and stagnant. But with the all-volunteer Army and the Navy reforms begun by Adm. [Elmo] Zumwalt, things really began to change.\u201d
\nSince then, women secured some combat support roles that put them on the front lines. Almost every job in every branch of the service is open to women. * On March 22, Sgt. Heather Lynn Johnson became the first woman to serve as an honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.
\nDuring the last week of March, President Clinton nominated career Marine Carol A. Mutter to become a lieutenant general, making her the highest-ranking woman in the military. *
\n\u201cIn terms of promotions and policies, we've made tremendous strides,\u201d says DACOWITS' Prevatte. \u201cBut when you layer that over the culture and see the slow rate of change in behavior toward women in the workplace, you realize that attitudes have not kept pace with policy.\u201d
\nDespite greater equality, adds Katzenstein, women still put up with daily taunts and jokes about their presence. \u201cThe women I talk to tell me it's a daily struggle,\u201d she says.
\nKorb notes, however, that 25 years after Truman signed the desegregation order for the armed forces, military race relations were still terrible. Since real advances for women's equality did not begin until the 1970s, it's not surprising there's still resistance, he says. \u201cAll in all,\u201d he says, \u201cwomen are pretty early on the integration curve.\u201d
\nWhere the curve goes now depends partly on politics, says Martin Binkin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. \u201cLyndon Johnson was the last Democratic president to have the military's support,\u201d he says. \u201cSince then, each branch of the service has tended to apply new ground rules stipulated by Democratic administrations, but then they hope for a Republican president to reverse things.\u201d
\nThe biggest expansion of women in the military came during Jimmy Carter's presidency, and when Ronald Reagan took office there was a lot of talk about having gone too fast, Binkin says. Reagan was a Republican but he didn't reverse Carter's advances, Binkin says, in part because Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger's wife had served in the military.
\nToday, Binkin says, \u201cThere's still a lot of resentment toward women\u201d in the military.
\nAs SLDN's Benecke explains, when formal barriers against women fall, informal ones rise up to take their place. Informal barriers, like sexual harassment and lesbian baiting, she says, have become very common, particularly since the 1991 Tailhook scandal. \u201cThere's been a real backlash,\u201d she says, \u201cand it's especially true in the Navy where women pilots are concerned. There, the backlash is worse than ever because male pilots blame women for the fallout from Tailhook.\u201d
\nBecause attitudes are so hard to alter, says sociologist Firestone, policy changes must force the issue of equality. And that means opening all combat positions to women. Until that happens, she says, women will not be treated equally with men.
\nMoskos says, however, that combat roles for women will always be limited by their physical size. Consequently, advances they make in combat will come where technology is more important than physical strength, much like the high-tech jobs women won aboard combat aircraft and ships.
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