McChurch - Setting the US Military Bar Too Low

By

Stan Moody

September 30, 2007

On Wednesday, September 26, 2007, General Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and thereby the most powerful military authority in the world, clarified at a Senate hearing a previous statement in the Chicago Tribune on gays in the military.

The clarification was as follows: “…we should respect those who want to serve the nation but not, through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God’s law.” He stated that he would be supportive of efforts to revisit the Pentagon’s policy so long as it did not violate his belief that sex should be restricted to a married heterosexual couple.

The standard, then, is Gen. Page’s upbringing. It must be noted that Gen. Pace will be retiring this week, thus removing the highest standard of military conduct and lowering the moral bar.

At the root of Gen. Pace’s problem seems to be a conflict between current government policy (“Don’t ask/Don’t tell”) and what he was taught as a child concerning homosexual sex. To put it in perspective, he sees the Law of God as preempting the laws of the nation he has so effectively served.

You have to wonder why the General did not heed Jesus’ command, “If your eye offend you, pluck it out,” and bow out graciously years ago. Instead, he rose to the top of the military establishment, a Herculean task indeed, and stands to collect a small fortune in retirement benefits at the hand of the very nation that offends his upbringing.

There seems to be something missing here.

If Gen. Pace was taught that homosexuality is counter to God’s law, he was also taught that masturbation, or “self-gratifying sex,” is counter to God’s law. He must have learned that lustful thoughts and their logical extension – “fornication” – are counter to God’s law. How, then, did Gen. Pace make it to the top with all that energy being expelled around him with few or no consequences?

He undoubtedly was taught that it was counter to God’s law to go to the movies, or to work on Sunday, or to covet somebody else’s possessions. What about his teaching to remember the Sabbath and to keep it holy? Undoubtedly, every childhood teaching that was counter to God’s law was screened through some kind of compromise in order for Gen. Pace to rise to the top of the military pyramid.

I have no answer for these questions. I must confess, however, that I am flummoxed over the ability of this obviously brilliant man to keep his sanity while skating around those things that he faced every day that were counter to God’s law.

Gen. Pace is addressing specific provisions in the Military Code of Justice against adultery and homosexual sex. Once those prohibitions are eliminated from within the Code, however, are they by implication then “condoned?” If they are, the Code opens the way to freely and openly practice any act that it does not specifically prohibit. That makes no sense, unless somehow the military has a selective view of morality, depending on whose ox is being gored.

Gen. Pace is correct, I think, in stating that “…the United States is not well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.” Failing to ban the behavior is, in Gen. Pace’s worldview, a making the behavior OK. Clearly, from our track record in Iraq under the leadership of Gen. Pace, we have not been well served, suggesting by his standards a direct correlation to immorality.

I would agree with Gen. Pace that all types of sexual misconduct are destructive not only to United States defense but to our nation’s vitality. Would that our military were all strong, upstanding people who did not drink much, were faithful to their wives (or husbands) and treated prisoners of war with dignity.

We heterosexuals have demonstrated no superior morality. The Code of Military Justice would do better to focus more on emotional, physical and sexual misconduct than on what specific of types of sexual acts were employed in that misconduct.

Outlawing adultery? In the world in which Gen. Pace was raised, not only the act but the thought would be sufficient grounds for dismissal, thoroughly gutting our military.