One argument in favor of lifting DADT that I’ve yet to hear anyone mention is the fact that one of the most fearsome fighting forces in the ancient world was a collection of 150 male couples known as the Sacred Band Of Thebes. According to Plutarch, the idea for this came from Plato’s Symposium, which makes neoconservative opposition to gays in the military almost completely inexplicable.
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Tazistan Jen
Yeah, and Amazons, too!
chopper
i hear this was like 300, only even more homoerotic.
Brian J
Plato=Greek=European=Faggy=Weak=THE TERRORISTS WIN!
I hope that helped.
Ash Can
Neoconservative opposition to gays in the military is extremely easy to explain, actually. It’s based on bigotry and prejudice. The end.
General Winfield Stuck
Yer getting awful far out on a limb Dougj. this topic often brings out peeps with saws. good luck dude.
Jager
Talk about “unit cohesion”…
DougJ
@General Winfield Stuck:
Huh? It’s undeniable that the Band Of Thebes was a truly legendary fighting force and that they were 150 gay couples.
John Cole
All the wingnuts loved 300, too, which was the gayest movie I have ever seen.
beltane
Many, if not most, of the great generals of antiquity were bisexual, if not flat-out gay. Just think of all the homosexuality that went on in the Roman legions. And those guys were tough, no girlie men there.
Zeke
Andrew Exum came perilously close to beating you to this one. And, not to crassly self-promote, but I finished the job.
Maude
Neoconservatives don’t know about Plutarch.
DougJ
@Brian J:
The neocons really, really love ancient Greece. Victor David Hansen studies it for a living, Bobo thinks the CIA should agents on special retreats to read Thucydides (you think I’m making this up, but I’m not), etc. It’s an understatement to call it a fixation.
The Dangerman
@John Cole:
They didn’t go see the movie (just like they didn’t read Sarah Palin’s
palmbook)……they thought it was a bowling movie.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ: It could be a great argument, I don’t know really. But the one of just basic human rights seems the best argument, especially since everyone knows that gays have been serving in our military since it’s beginning and have done their duty with equal success to straights.
No need for me to argue they were some kind of super soldiers so that is why they should repeal DADT. And Fuck the neocons, and I am not even sure they are the biggest opponents of allowing gays to serve openly. That mantle seems to be with the right wing so called Christians. But you could be right and likely are. As I am not well versed on the topic.
Leelee for Obama
I have known several gay men who served in the military, secretly, of course. I don’t want to make a blanket statement, but I think all of them were given medals for their exemplary service. Hard to believe this is a country where there is a volunteer military fighting 2 wars for 6 and 8 years, respectively, and we STILL don’t allow all volunteers to serve. This bit of ancient history will change not one mind. These are the same people who will tell you they’d rather have their daughter die of AIDS than allow her to use condoms to prevent pregnancy. Because she’ll lose her soul, you see? They are reactionary ideologues. Truth is not the goal
Sad, but true.
SiubhanDuinne
Theban advertising slogan:
Max
I am comforted in the warm embrace of the facts that anti-gay sentiment decreases considerably in each generation.
I like to think Gen X is pretty laid back about it, but the Gen Y group is so beyond us in acceptance.
My brother is 25, 13 years younger than I am, and he is completely oblivious to someone’s sexuality, gay, straight, bi, he and his friends just don’t have issues with it – and his dad is the biggest racist, homophobe around.
Fucking Boomers! (kidding)
beltane
@DougJ: Achilles was gay (though he may not have existed). Alexander the Great was pretty gay too, and Marcus Aurelius and Julius Caesar were not completely straight. The list could go on. To express passionate love for a woman was considered a sign of weakness in the ancient world, especially among the Greeks, who held women in less regard than the Romans. The neocons are a very strange group of people.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole: It was all that blood and sweat, I think. But seriously, the Spartans that weren’t gay had a really cool and hot way to get married.
They just sneaked into the their prospective brides quarters one sultry summer night and ravished their wife for the marriage ceremony. None of that rice and tin cans behind the truck shit. And love and cherish squish, Just wham bam thank you mam, and off to war till the next time. If they survived.
DougJ
@General Winfield Stuck:
But doesn’t this kind of thing make a mockery of the whole all-straight “unit cohesion” thing?
DougJ
@General Winfield Stuck:
The neocons are almost entirely secular and Jewish.
RedKitten
@Max: You’re not wrong about that, Max. You hear now about kids coming out while still in high school, and for the most part, the response is a collective shrug of “Yeah, okay…yay for you, then.”
That would have NEVER happened when I was in high school — any exits from the proverbial closet occurred years after graduation.
MikeJ
Mickey Mouse’s dog, right?
Leelee for Obama
@MikeJ: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ah
You made me laugh out loud! Thanks!
Batocchio
I’ve heard it. This argument used to be made more often, but I’ve seen it since at least the 90s. I remember the WaPo published a op-ed making this argument at one point, but it might not be on the internet tubes.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ: That was made mockery many moons ago. In my unit, we mostly knew who was gay, and nobody really cared and it wasn’t a problem, except maybe a moron redneck now and then. And that was the 70’s.
Besides, it”s over, the ban. The military itself is accepting it and the wetsuiter wingnuts lost their bid to maintain bigotry in the military, as they have most other places. Except marriage of course. And that is only a matter of time. As is the DADT repeal, that being sooner rather than later.
beltane
@Max: This is so true. My oldest son is in high school and he will very casually talk about some of his classmates being gay or bi with no fear or scorn or anything negative at all. It’s amazing that this rural, working class high school is way more tolerant than the NYC public high school I went to in the mid-80s (and in Greenwich Village of all places).
The right-wingers are going to have a hard time putting this particular genie back in the bottle.
Brian J
@John Cole:
Try having a party in college based around the movie where you and the other eight guys you lived with wore nothing but black underwear, a cape, and sneakers. I’ve never been so happy to see girls show up to any place, ever.
Phoebe
The title of this post wins the Nobel Post Title Prize.
Brian J
@DougJ:
Just because they really like something doesn’t mean they can ignore what they don’t like about it.
Deschanel
Or, you could go with “Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women During WWII” by Alan Berube.
The title is misleading. For one thing, it is not at all about ,”coming out” in our modern identity sense of revelation. Say, inconveniently during a Pacific firefight! No, it’s just a fascinating study of how very well gay people were integrated and tolerated and showed bravery -like very other citizen of fighting age in those times, where everyone’s effort was needed and valued.
The heartbreaking part of the book is the aftermath- the camraderie gay and straight soldiers enjoyed during the war ended, and the real mass expulsions began. Gay soldiers were given Dishonorable Discharges, no matter how well they served in the War. This marked them for life in postwar America- you had to explain why, gay soldiers were made unemployable pariahs, denied benefits and pensions, denied humanity. So many destroyed lives. Google Books:
books.google.com/books?id=H-Lo5vA6lSYC&lpg=PP1&dq=alan%20berube%20coming%20out%20under%20f…
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ:
What does that have to do with it? I don’t think the neocons are what’s behind DADT. At least not vociferously. And they are small in numbers and mostly only care about killing brown people anyways/ And don’t much care who does it, long is it;s not them or their spawn taking the risk. The ban has always had Christian religious roots imo. and general societal fear about sexuality.
Keith G
Theban Army Slogan:
We will never leave our lovers behind.
Seriously.
Tax Analyst
This thread makes me think of the old “Men on Film” skits on “In Living Color” – that segment sure cracked me up. I know they would have given “300” “3 Snaps”.
J. Michael Neal
I think the proper answer to DADT is to divide up the services. The Army is for manly, heterosexual men. The Marines should all be gay men. Straight women go to the Navy, and lesbians fly airplanes from solid ground.
I think that leaves the special forces for transgendered people.
Max
@J. Michael Neal: And the Coast Guard shall be bi.
Brian J
@J. Michael Neal:
Remember the point in the movie My Fellow Americans, where James Garner and Jack Lemmon ride with some massive biker chicks in order to get somewhere, and Jack Lemmon says that he should reconsider his opposition to women in the military? Perhaps some of the neocons simply need to get their asses kicked a gigantic, jacked, butch gay guy so they can see gay guys can be just as tough as straight guys.
DougJ
@General Winfield Stuck:
Bill Kristol has been very against lifting DADT. He’s been the one leading the charge in the media.
MikeJ
@Max:
Which goes along with the old tradition of “gay at sea, straight on land.”
I know there’s a littoral/clitoral joke here somewhere.
Stooleo
And for “Julie and Julia” “Hated it!” :D
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ: Bill Kristol is a defrocked minister of death. He is the head master of the Fox News neutered neocon wankers. He has his supporters in the military, but most of them are on a variety of Pentagon shit lists for at least the duration of the Obama administration and hopefully beyond. The top dogs of the machine we know as the US Military have spoken of the need to repeal DADT, in public, on record of congress. It is only a matter of time till the wingnuts in congress and their conservadem allies read the writing on the wall and take note.
Gus
@John Cole: I loved Sarah Silverman’s line that they got the name 300 from how gay it was on a scale of one to ten.
Yutsano
@J. Michael Neal:
Heh. I am so stealing this for the Dawg. He’ll laugh his ass off at that. Of course he says half the Marines he knows are gay so maybe there’s something to that statement. Then again I know gay Army guys too so it doesn’t quite ring true. Oh well, it still made me guffaw.
fraught
If you’re gay and read books, (OK, if you read books) the bandofthebes.com website is essential.
Oregon Tomaters
was this homosexuality between adult men, or the more PC (in antiquity!!!) pederastic relationship between a grown man and a young teenage boy? I believe the wiki-article linked to describes the band as consisting of “age stratified couples”.
From what I’ve read, the Greeks and Romans placed great importance on who was doing the penetrating. They did not consider it appropriate for a grown man to be a “bottom”. Mockery of adult homosexual relationships appears in some Greek dramas, such as those of Aristophanes.
So, in a way, the Sacred Band of Thebes was not so much the Will and Grace Warriors as the NAMBLA battalion.
Arclite
A couple of thoughts come to mind.
First was the time when This American Life dedicated a story to testosterone, and measured the levels of all the staff. Turned out the big, strong, balding, gay producer had the highest level.
The second is this video (from The Onion):
youtube.com/watch?v=aotlEpmAFVQ
Arclite
@ beltane
On the other hand, jump into any online multiplayer shooter and be prepared to be called every homophobic name in the book over Teamspeak.
protected static
…don’t forget the example set by the samurai, though @Oregon Tomaters is correct in that this involved a lot more pederasty than we’re currently comfortable with. The norm was often that ‘love’ relations were between older men (as tops) and younger men/boys (as bottoms) while marriage and producing offspring was a duty. The Japanese drew the distinction w/ giri and ninjo: giri is the devotion demanded by society, while ninjo is the devotion engendered by emotion; it’s cold and hot running dedication. With some subtitles, The Sacred Band would have grokked it immediately.
Cain
@Brian J:
I’m reminded about an Eddie Murphy skit who of course loved to pick on gays and did so in a very funny way. I think in one he was talking about harassing the gays and then he made the observation that they were still guys and can beat the shit out of you.
“Are there any homosexuals in the audience? No? Goood… let’s talk about them…” damn that cracks me up everytime.
cain
The Other Steve
So what you’re saying is if we repeal DADT soldiers are going to be forced to take gay lovers?
Doesn’t this argument just play completely into the hands of the detractors? Aren’t you just proving how Condescending liberals are with this argument?
Brachiator
Silly rabbit. Everyone knows that all positive aspects of ancient culture were rendered null and void by the rise of Christianity. Ancient Greeks can be dismissed because they were pagans.
Neocons know both Plutarch and hypocrisy. Some (Kristol, Douthat) went to prep schools and Ivy League colleges. I find it hard to believe that they would be unfamiliar with classical literature. Others love to quote Victor Davis Hanson, who would have you believe that the conflicts between Sparta and Persia was the first skirmish in the war on terrorism.
By the by, with regard to ancient history, I highly recommend THE POISON KING: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, by Adrienne Mayor . A tidbit from a recent review here:
The author at a couple of places compares Mithradates to both bin Laden and Christ. Now, there’s something that would make a wingnut froth with rage. Good times.
Not much homosexuality here. But the Poison King did marry his own sister.
aimai
The band of lovers. Yeah, I was going to mention them a few days ago but then decided I’d look like an egghead.
aimai
Sarcastro
Many, if not most, of the great generals of antiquity were bisexual, if not flat-out gay.
Those are modern terms (gay, bisexual) and have approximately zero relevance to the ancient world. Neither does “pedophile”, but a fair lot of them would certainly qualify were they here today*.
Just think of all the homosexuality that went on in the Roman legions. And those guys were tough, no girlie men there.
And here’s a perfect example. Homosexual relations between legionaries was punishable by fustuarium, being beaten to death by your fellow troops. Why? Because such an act required one of the participants to be on the receiving end, as it were.
Penetrating another male was perfectly copacetic to the Romans, being penetrated was most certainly not. Diddling your male camp-follower was unremarkable, but being diddled by your watch-mate was a death-sentence. They didn’t, after all, call Caesar “The Queen Of Bithynia” as a compliment. Although, to be fair, his troops did get a huge kick out of the slur against their general that he was “every woman’s husband and every man’s wife”. Enough so that they incorporated it into their marching songs.
* Please don’t take this as equating pedophilia and homosexuality, this is just a rather glaring example of totally differing sexual mores and attitudes in ancient times. Another example from classical antiquity would be the rampant incest in the Hellenistic east.
dana
Here I toot my own horn! Not that I’d generally recommend taking military lessons from Phaedrus….
Mithradates
Victor Davis Hanson’s new novel is about the Sacred Theban Band. That ought to educate the anti-gay conservatives.
Ruckus
@DougJ:
Bill Kristol has been very against lifting DADT. He’s been the one leading the charge in the media.
So now one more thing Kristol is wrong about. I bet dad is so proud. The son who can’t get anything right. Kind of like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. No pun intended.