Wolfgang von Skeptik

Miscellaneous Idiocies

I DIDN’T HAVE TIME to research it until today, but just about the most breathtakingly idiotic proposal I have ever heard of surfaced in the news yesterday: a plan by the Department of Defense to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice so that it is a court-martial offense – a serious crime – for U.S. military men to hire prostitutes. The defense department’s intention was reported in a United Press International story, which indicated that a considerable controversy has arisen over the measure and is being covered extensively by Stars and Stripes, the quasi-official U.S. Army newspaper, even as the mainstream American media ignores it.

Googling “ucmj changes” reveals the revision is another product of the same Christian Fundamentalist/radical feminist collaboration that has inflicted on the America public several “anti-pornography” ordinances so maliciously tyrannical that even sympathetic courts have rejected them as unconstitutional. Feminist involvement also probably explains why the homeland media has censored the story, since once it becomes widely known, it is likely to trigger a nearly universal outpouring of vehement protest from the medical community.

Here a bit of history is in order. Prior to World War II, American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen infected with venereal diseases faced automatic court martial. But with the advent of more enlightened attitudes and better medicine, the military eventually realized that its policy was actually worsening the VD problem. Military men who caught the clap or some more dreadful form of VD went to great lengths to keep it secret, seeking treatment outside the armed services and frequently becoming the victims of quacks. Worse, many such men sought no treatment at all, preferring to endure their ever-worsening symptoms in silence. But with the change in regulations, the barriers to obtaining proper care were removed, and VD cases declined accordingly.

(I just realized that, typical of a man my age, I am using obsolete terminology. Today’s synonym for VD is “STD” – “sexually transmitted disease.")

The outrageous idiocy of the defense department’s proposal is that it will of course force history to repeat itself. Military men are not altar boys or monks and they should not be required to behave as if they are. Soldiers and their counterparts in the other services often patrol the border between life and death and thus frequently seek sexual pleasure wherever and whenever they can find it; typically this means going “down to the vil” to some place with a name like “the House of the Blue Door” and hiring one of the young women who dwell and work within. The better classes of such places try very hard to protect their customers from VD. But if a military man should be unlucky and catch an STD, enactment of this new regulation will fling him back into the pre-World-War-II era: facing court martial, he will once again seek treatment outside the service, or from some quack, or in fear opt to do nothing save literally “pissing and moaning” (the original source of the phrase). The STD count will again soar. Cases of gonorrhea, syphilis and AIDS will spiral. Deaths will increase accordingly.

All this because of the Christian Fundamentalists in the Bush Administration -- who like Christian Fundamentalists everywhere despise any expression of sexuality whatsoever and therefore have made common cause with radical feminists who would prohibit all expression of male sexuality. Together they have formed an unholy alliance that is already reaching into every American military barracks on the planet. The mainstream media, thoroughly feminized since the 1980s, is helping by its silence. Verily, I cannot doubt that – unless it is stopped – this dreadful coalition of Christofascists and matrifascists will be reaching into all our own bedrooms next.

The UPI story is here. Detailed minutes of a Congressional hearing on the UCMJ change are available here (scroll down to September 21), followed by a link to a Christian Fundamentalist report on the measure here. Were this not so deadly serious, I could almost dismiss it as an election-year dirty trick by some closeted defense department DemocRat, a ploy to erode the military’s overwhelming support for President Bush. (Thanks to Lucianne.com for the UPI story.)

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MORE ELECTION-YEAR STUPIDITY was reported by Steve Gilbert of American Thinker, who notes correctly it was Congressional Democrats, not Republicans, who introduced the legislation to resurrect the military draft, and the Kerry Campaign that proposed universal national service starting in high school. The American Thinker link is here. The Kerry proposal has been taken down from the official campaign website – obviously to hide the evidence even as Kerry attempts to revise recent history to pin a rapidly spreading draft-resurrection rumor on President Bush and the Bush Administration in general. But the Kerry material is cached in Google and is available both here or through the Thinker piece. You cannot but wonder if the new DNC tactical director is Mortimer Snurd.

On the same general topic, hats off to Michelle Malkin for noting a RatherBiased.com update from last night: Rather is at it again, once more doing his Jayson Blair act, this time in furtherance of the Kerry campaign’s spurious claims about the draft. Here’s the link to Malkin’s blog, through which you can access the latest RatherBiased. Or you can go there directly via this.

Incidentally, I agree with Kerry that we should restore national service, and I especially like his notion of starting the preparation for it in high school. I believe we all owe our nation some form of service, and I believe it would be very good for national morale and national morals if that principle were once again officially recognized. But that is a discussion for another time – I promise. And none of Kerry’s proposals (I support his anti-outsourcing measures too) are sufficient to win my vote: they are all outweighed by his oft-stated intention to shrink the war against terrorist Islam back to a matter of law enforcement and diplomacy -- a strategy that offers about as much potential for success as calling out the French national police to stop Hitler’s Wehrmacht.

Posted by Loren at September 29, 2004 04:54 AM