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There are some big issues that need to be addressed before a decision like allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military is made, and I don’t hear anyone asking the right questions.

Here’s one: Where will gay men and women in our formations sleep and shower? We don’t currently allow men and women to sleep and shower together in our units, because of perceived morality issues and because it would almost certainly lead to behavior that is contrary to the good order and discipline of a unit. So will we allow men who are sexually inclined to other men, or women who are inclined to women, to sleep and shower with the same sex? Or will we make them sleep and shower with the opposite sex? Or will we give them their own showers and label them “gay man” and “gay woman” shower/lodging facilities? But that would be labeling the users and certainly lead to equal opportunity or some other type of complaints because the people using those facilities would feel singled out as homosexuals, and like they are not being treated as equals to their heterosexual counterparts. This is the complaint under the current policy.

We must look at these and other follow-on effects of homosexuals openly serving in our military and develop a plan on how to deal with these things before we change the policy only to figure out that in our haste to be politically correct, we have traded one set of problems concerning this issue for a whole new series of problems.

Maj. Steve PetersenBasra, Iraq

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