Don’t ask, don’t tell

The Weekly Standard has an excellent piece on what is publicly referred to as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Of particular note is that there is no such legislation. The term stems from an executive order by President Clinton. We will not get into the actual debate here except to suggest that openly homosexuals could be segregated in much the same way as women. (Women are not allowed in combat for example) Of importance to this blog is found in the actual legislation that Clinton was attempting to circumvent. The law disallows open, non-coerced homosexuality. More importantly, at the beginning  after Constitutional authority for the law, subsection “(2) There is no constitutional right to serve in the armed forces.” The U.S.armed forces are regulated by Congress under authority of Section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States. While some rights are retained by those serving, those rights are far from complete. Free speech via words and clothing immediately come to mind. There are political and rational reasons reasons to allow women to serve and also to limit their roles. Race is on different footing. Other than purely visual characteristics, there is no difference between men (in general) of different races any more than hair color or eye color. Distinguishing on those basis would be a violation of due process. On personal traits however, distinctions should be made. A pacifist should not be allowed in combat roles regardless of any other characteristics and their background is irrelevant. If everyone should be allowed to serve, wouldn’t pacifists be part of everyone? So now that we have established that individuals can be classified into what roles they may be allowed to serve in, all that’s  left is deciding the lines we are willing to draw.

AX

This entry was posted on 10/22/09 at 11:31 and is filed under Amendment X. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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