Colleges should welcome military (and prejudice)

The military needs these highly skilled people. This week, the Supreme Court seemed to recognize that need, as it considered whether colleges can snub military recruiters in protest of the Pentagon’s anti-gay policies.

The military will likely win this court battle, as it should. But it will lose the recruiting war in the long run, if leaders in Congress and the armed services don’t eliminate all barriers that deter qualified people -- including gay people -- from serving their country.

After four years of war, the armed services are struggling to meet their recruiting targets. Recruiters face anti-war sentiments on high schools and college campuses, where they traditionally find recruits. They also face opposition from people who see the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, passed in Congress during the Clinton administration, as discriminatory. [...]

The justices seemed supremely unsympathetic to the colleges’ complaints, and rightly so. The military isn’t just another employer, as some colleges like to argue. The right of the federal government to defend the nation by forming a military is expressly included in the Constitution. [...]

Colleges should welcome the military for what it is: a career opportunity for students, and an honorable necessity of a free country. But they should also keep speaking out against Congress’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. (source)

It’s all fine and well to state that the “military isn’t just another employer, as some colleges like to argue”, but it is because they represent OUR government, they should also represent the “brightest and the best” we as a nation have to offer. Many of those people happen to be gay or lesbian, and they deserve equal treatment and respect. They deserve to be able to hold their heads up high to fight for their country without having to lie about what they are.

“Colleges should welcome the military for what it is: a career opportunity for students, and an honorable necessity of a free country.”

Fine, but that statement is inaccurate. What would have been accurate would be this...

Colleges should welcome the military for what it is: a career opportunity for SOME students (gays and lesbians need not apply if you have pride in what you are), and an honorable necessity of a free country.

“But they [the colleges] should also keep speaking out against Congress’ ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”

The Supreme Court will probability rule that it is just fine for the military to continue to discriminate against gay and lesbian Americans, despite the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution, and the First Amendment, which the law schools are basing their case upon.

This is why I am not too excited about the prospect of the issue of marriage equality for same sex couples to come before THIS Supreme Court, as I stated in this entry. They will somehow come to the conclusion, that where “marriage” is concerned, it’s off-limits for gay couples, and, they will find some way to justify it, probably by saying that they are “protecting children”, or some other crap excuse.

It would seem that discrimination against gays and lesbians, despite what the Constitution has to say about equal access to the laws and equality, simply do not exist for gay citizens at this time.