DeckKnight, I'm really glad editor of the Smog and all but how can you say such veiled bigoted stuff?
It's not exactly veiled, he literally said that homosexuals can never be equal to heterosexuals and that being gay is a health risk.
By which I will illustrate tangentially by saying the military has discriminated against me. I was asthmatic growing up so when the Coast Guard looked at my medical record I was pretty much shot from the get-go, despite having grown out of it. I wasn't about to lie to military recruiters.
The military requires intense physical conditioning. There is a perfectly good reason to not include asthmatic children in our armies. What reason is there to exclude homosexuals again? Give evidence.
Taking a clinical look at the various maladies and environmental conditions that afflict homosexuals as a group indicates they may be less desireable candidates for recruitment. These have been studied at great length by a great many people and controlled for any mitigating variables.
Can you please name some of the specific "maladies and environmental conditions that afflict homosexuals as a group" that would make us less desirable for military recruitment? You are being quite vague here for someone making such a bold claim with no evidence. I also love your word choice, "afflict", as if it were a disease.
In short sexuality is very much not just about bigotry as Morm seems to indiciate. There are real consequences to normalizing a behavior that has over many different times and cultures shown to have similar dysfunctional characteristics. This is not to say a person should be harmed, punished, or fired for it, merely that you can't make two unequal things equal without it causing harm.
What consequences would those be? What harm would be caused by teaching the fact that some people are gay? Be specific and give evidence.
This is where the "equality" measure fails because there will never be a point in time where a young child being taught that homosexuality is equally healthy way to live is being anything but misled. It is simply not the case empirically. No matter how "open" society becomes the culture that surrounds homosexual activity will always trend towards more dangerous activities than heterosexuality.
Maybe the reason why "homosexual activity will always trend towards more dangerous activities" is because kids who explore their sexuality get shunned by people like you instead of getting the guidance required to make intelligent choices? Normalizing homosexuality would literally eliminate every concern of yours, because people would know the potential risks of STDs beforehand.
I have known I am gay for quite a while now, and I am STD and AIDS free.
I have known many straight people who have gotten STDs from straight sex.
I have known a small handful of straight people who have gotten their lover pregnant at a time when neither of them could afford to support a baby. That sounds pretty damn dangerous to me.
The risks in sex have nothing to do with orientation and everything to do with preparation.
Remember they used to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder. The United States Military was around at that time and long before and naturally it takes a lot longer for people whose lives are on the line to accept pandering and equivocation when they spend portions of their time being shot at. They know everyone in their unit with great detail because they must in order to survive. DADT for the most part kept them quiet about the sexuality issue because it was explicitly verbotten to bring up. Now it is not, and it will be brought up, and there will be consequences for that.
The only consequences will come from the soldiers who are too blinded with ignorance to realize that sexuality has nothing to do with military performance.
Your entire post is filled with reasons why homosexuals are inferior to heterosexuals, but you didn't give any scientific evidence to back up your claims (probably because there is none). This is the definition of homophobia. I look forward to your response to this post, although you probably won't give one.