David McReynolds was on the staff of the War Resisters League for many years, and, as the Socialist Party candidate in 1980 and 2000, the first openly gay person to run for the U.S. presidency. He lives with two cats on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
When General Peter Pace presented his view that homosexuality was immoral, I thought, "Good heavens, there is a danger the military may be infused with moral concerns—this could lead to mass desertions at the highest level."
Leaving to one side the question of whether homosexuality is immoral (though not before noting that Jesus, who had clear views on many issues, never uttered a single recorded word on this subject), if the general is to take up moral issues, surely there should be a certain priority. If, in the course of his busy day, he gets a chance to think about it, which would be more immoral: two soldiers making love or any soldier shooting people in another country, at the order of the president, for the clear purpose of gaining control over the oil in that country? If we learned anything from Nuremberg, it was that wars of aggression are a crime against humanity. We also know that torture violates international treaties, and yet torture has been an intrinsic part of the U.S. misadventure in Iraq.
In my youth, then a devout believer and a member of the Baptist Church, I had serious struggles reconciling my homosexuality with the "social controls" that taught me that I was trapped in sin. I long ago resolved those conflicts (and, in the process, became what might be called a "religious atheist"). Of course I believe that homosexuals and lesbians must have the same rights as any other person to serve in the U.S. military.
The issue, however, is whether those of us who have had to go through this intense struggle to gain self-knowledge—some sense of what is truly right and wrong—should not also have learned that our very process of facing painful decisions made us more aware than the average person of just what is truly immoral. The gay and lesbian struggle should focus—must focus—on the fact that the war in Iraq is a criminal adventure, in violation of the United Nations charter. There is not a question of this realization being "left" or "right"—rather, it is a question of right and wrong. If, on the one hand, we demand military service be open to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, surely, on the other hand, we must urge them to avoid such service when they may find themselves used as pawns of what the ruling class perceives as its interests. (And the interests of those who run a country are usually quite different from the interests of the rest of us.)
There was another aspect to General Pace's comments which should cause all of us—left, right, gay, lesbian—to pause. Increasingly we find the U.S. military is being systematically infected by a kind of Christian fundamentalism which is concerned with the "moral questions" of sexuality—whether adultery or homosexuality—but not concerned with the more basic moral questions which have been addressed by all the great religions—matters of social justice and compassion.
It was precisely this concern which led to the death of Jesus, to the murder of Gandhi, to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A more careful examination of what is moral and what is immoral might lead the good general to resign his post. A true sense of moral values often subverts the existing order—never more so than today, when the U.S. has become a rogue state.
As the son of a father who served his country in the Army Air Force in World War II, and retired as a lieutenant colonel, I respect—deeply—the role of the military in trying to defend a country, even if my pacifist beliefs lead me in a different direction. But there is a vast difference between the defense of your country, and the invasion of someone else's. Let us hope that at some point this occurs to General Pace.
