Maintaining an emotional disconnect from the pain they inflict is crucial to the anti-gay project. It's a hard balancing act to pull off, particularly these days, when it seems that the right is running on nothing but fumes and hate. The media seem to think it's enough to ban the use of the word f*ggot.
By that reckoning, General Peter Pace's recent statement that gays should not be allowed to serve in the military because homosexuality is immoral should be no big deal; after all, he didn't use any naughty words. And yet somehow one feels the hate is there. Former Senator Alan Simpson, Republican from Wyoming, lays it out in a piece for the Washington Post entitled "Bigotry That Hurts Our Military":
According to the Government Accountability Office, more than 300 language experts have been fired under "don't ask, don't tell," including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. This when even Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice recently acknowledged the nation's "foreign language deficit" and how much our government needs Farsi and Arabic speakers. Is there a "straight" way to translate Arabic? Is there a "gay" Farsi? My God, we'd better start talking sense before it is too late. . . .
. . .
To fill its needs, the Army is granting a record number of "moral waivers," allowing even felons to enlist. Yet we turn away patriotic gay and lesbian citizens.
Peter Pace would rather recruit criminals who would otherwise be sitting in prison than retain highly qualified-even indispensable-LGBT personnel under his command. You can call that General Pace's religion or his personal opinion. You can even call it love if you have the nerve, but it's hatred all the same.
Pace's bigotry has proved somewhat awkward, since it lays him open, at the very least, to charges of serious managerial incompetence, but it's exactly the kind of divisiveness the rightwing political blogosphere glories in. Consider, for example, this posting by Mike Adams on Townhall.com, regarding the suggestion that, as with the n word, only gay people can use the word f*ggot without giving offense:
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