Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

Democratic Senator Mike Gravel, speaking at a gay "rights" event, recently said the following:

"If you had any knowledge of history, ancient history, in Sparta they encouraged homosexuality because they fight for the people they love. And if it's your partner and you love them, you're prepared to die for them, and that's the same ethic you see in the military today. It's not the country. It's my partner. Go see the movies on war, and it's always the person next to me who is in my foxhole with me. Well, I got to tell you, extend that a little further and you'll see why the Spartans trained their people to be homosexuals, because they're better fighters."

For now, let's ignore his insane tirade claiming that Spartans actually preferred homosexuals in the military because "they fight for the people they love." (I thought the point is to beat the enemy and win a war, even if the price to pay is your life or your friend's.)

Hands down, the pièce de résistance was the following:

"Spartans trained their people to be homosexuals..." Is anyone listening to this? According to commonly accepted liberal perspectives, I thought people were born this way. Now, at least according to Sen. Gravel, it is possible to train people to be, and I would then assume, not to be homosexual. I'm not sure he's really helping his friends in the gay community.

Another study in contrasts is appropriate here. Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote a fascinating article earlier this year entitiled, "Ask, Tell, Whatever?" In it, he underscores the very unique culture that distinguishes the military from other groups or institutions. I've pulled some of the more salient observations.
___

Most research has shown unit cohesion is critical to military effectiveness and battlefield success. The key to cohesion is what the Greeks called philia — friendship, comradeship, or brotherly love. Philia is the bond among disparate individuals who have nothing in common but facing death and misery together. Its importance has been described by J. Glenn Gray in The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle:

Numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other abstract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves, they would expose their companions to greater danger. Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale. The commander who can preserve and strengthen it knows that all other physical and psychological factors are little in comparison. The feeling of loyalty, it is clear, is the result, not the cause, of comradeship. Comrades are loyal to each other spontaneously and without any need for reasons.

The presence of open homosexuals (and women) in the close confines of ships or military units opens the possibility that eros will be unleashed into an environment based on philia, creating friction and corroding the very source of military excellence itself. It does so by undermining the non-sexual bonding essential to unit cohesion as described by Gray. Unlike philia, eros is sexual, and therefore individual and exclusive. Eros manifests itself as sexual competition, protectiveness, and favoritism, all of which undermine order, discipline, and morale. These are issues of life and death, and help to explain why open homosexuality and homosexual behavior traditionally have been considered incompatible with military service. -Mackubin Thomas Owens, National Review, April 16, 2007