women in combat

As we noted earlier today, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has  claimed that both the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the end of the ban on women serving in combat positions will deter so many volunteers that the military will be forced to reinstate the draft.

On Focal Point today, Fischer drew a direct line between “Big Gay” and women in combat. “Malicious” and “sinister” gay rights activists, he claims, are “trying to destroy the military,” which will ultimately mean “they’re going to have a tough time filling their ranks with qualified soldiers. So they’re going to have to go to the draft, and that means your daughters are going to be pulled into the draft and they could be sent into combat to die, whether they want to do it or not, because of Big Gay.”

Watch:

The last few years have been tough on Elaine Donnelly, as the Phyllis Schlafly protégé appears to have lost the battle over her group’s two main priorities: maintaining the ban on openly gay service members and excluding women from combat positions. Donnelly, the head of the Center for Military Readiness, appeared on Secure Freedom Radio last week with Frank Gaffney to demand that Congress intervene and block the Obama administration from permitting women to serve in combat.

She predicted that “lives are lost” if women have the opportunity to serve in such units, which she arged would make the military’s mission “more difficult [and] more dangerous.” “This is the political agenda of the President,” Donnelly said, “we see the outgoing Secretary of Defense planting on the Pentagon the flag of feminism right next to the LGBT gay activist flag.”

Gaffney: What does it mean for the war fighting capabilities of the United States that we are relaxing the standards or we are enabling people who will not be able to meet them to get access to and become part of the military cadre?

Donnelly: When you complicate matters in infantry battalions you make life and missions there more difficult, more dangerous, bottom line: lives are lost. There is no excuse for doing this. We know that women are promoted at rates equal to or faster than men and it’s been that way for decades. This is the political agenda of the President that is being imposed on the one institution or the one organization that he can order as Commander-in-Chief and everybody has to salute and make it work. That includes the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they are going along with this even though they have not disclosed the results of the marine tests. Now if the marine tests supported the goal of women being in the infantry, don’t you think we would’ve heard about it by now? Instead, we see the outgoing Secretary of Defense planting on the Pentagon the flag of feminism right next to the LGBT gay activist flag. These people are in charge of the Pentagon unless Congress intervenes and Congress has the responsibility to intervene. Under the Constitution, Congress makes policy, not the President, not the Joint Chiefs and certainly the field commanders who will have to implement these diversity metrics in order to get promoted.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is now recycling the exact same talking points against allowing women the opportunity to serve in combat that he used opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT).

While none of the dire predictions Fischer warned about regarding the end of DADT ever materialized, Fischer made similar warnings while speaking yesterday with Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness. Like with the DADT’s repeal, Fischer predicted that the policy will undermine readiness, cohesion, security and performance, possibly leading “to a reinstatement of the draft.”

While Donnelly avoided Fischer’s question about reinstating the draft, she claimed that women will now have to register in the selective service system and said the policy will “harm women, men, infantry battalions and the national security of the United States.”

Donnelly said that sexual assaults may increase because male soldiers will resent the easier “double standards” for women, warning that now the whole military will “fall apart.”

Fischer: There’s also the issue of sexual tension and sexual misconduct, the potential for that is going to be introduced.

Donnelly: If you want to make that even worse than what we’re seeing now, and the rates keep going up and up it’s getting worse and worse, put women into direct combat units, adjust the standards to make it work and then just sit back and watch everything fall apart because double standards are so corrosive to morale. It increases resentment, resentment leads to sexual harassment, assaults or worse, this is a poisonous kind of atmosphere.

Later, Fischer warned of a “complete sexual meltdown” occurring due to “predatory women” trying to sleep with officers, citing CIA head David Petraeus’s affair with a reporter.

But a caller insisted that maybe the Obama administration decided to end prohibitions on women and openly gay service members so they can share foxholes together, an idea Fischer loved: “Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen.”

Fischer: I just think having women in uniform is just a bad idea and here we are seeing one of the reasons. You have got subordinates serving powerful supervisors, you’ve got predatory women, it’s just a recipe for complete sexual meltdown and that’s why we are seeing General Petreaus being a key example of that.

Let’s go to Lee, Bluefield, Virginia.

Caller: I’m gonna have to do something I thought I would never do. I am going to have to give President Obama credit for having a long-range strategy because I just realized why he wanted soldiers to be able to serve in the military and be openly gay, because when it comes time to share a foxhole he will put the openly gay soldiers in the foxhole with the women and that way they’ll both be safe.

Fischer: So Lee’s saying this is a brilliant strategy on the part of President Obama to eliminate sexual tension in the military. Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen. There won’t be any sexual misconduct. That’s President Obama thinking outside the box.

While the Religious Right reacted with apoplectic rage following the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the lifting of the ban on women in combat has brought dejected but relatively subdued responses from conservatives.

American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer, who in December spoke out in favor of the ban by lying about the Israeli military’s policy on women in combat, tweeted that the decision was part of Obama’s plan to “feminize and weaken the U.S. military.”

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said that “lives could be lost unnecessarily” by the new policy, which “will harm men and the mission of the infantry as a whole.” “The administration has a pattern of irresponsible actions like this using the military to advance a social agenda,” she said, “This kind of a social experiment is a dangerous one.”

Faith and Freedom Coalition head Ralph Reed maintained that the Obama administration is “putting women in combat situations is the latest in a series of moves where political correctness and liberal social policy have trumped sound military practice.”

Richard Viguerie’s group claimed that “Obama’s plan to introduce women into frontline combat roles in the U.S. military is a dangerous and irresponsible social experiment, not an opportunity for women to serve their country and advance in their chosen profession.”

Radio talk show host Janet Mefferd on her Facebook page wrote that the move is further proof that the Obama administration is “intent upon undoing this great country” and will “stop at nothing to achieve it.”

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin, who was reprimanded by President Bush after he made anti-Muslim and political speeches while in uniform, called the decision “another social experiment”:

The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment, and they have never lived nor fought with an infantry or Special Forces unit. These units have the mission of closing with and destroying the enemy, sometimes in close hand-to-hand combat. They are often in sustained operations for extended periods, during which they have no base of operations nor facilities. Their living conditions are primal in many situations with no privacy for personal hygiene or normal functions. Commanders are burdened with a very heavy responsibility for succeeding in their mission and for protecting their troops.

This decision to integrate the genders in these units places additional and unnecessary burdens on leaders at all levels. While their focus must remain on winning the battles and protecting their troops, they will now have the distraction of having to provide some separation of the genders during fast moving and deadly situations. Is the social experiment worth placing this burden on small unit leaders? I think not.

Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said that the “majority of women” don’t care about the ban or want its elimination:

News of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's intent to lift the long-standing ban on women serving in direct combat is further proof that this administration simply does not care about the issues about which the majority of women care. Once again, their interest on women issues is driven by special interest groups. The point of the military is to protect our country. Anything that distracts from that is detrimental. Our military cannot continue to choose social experimentation and political correctness over combat readiness. While this decision is not unexpected from this administration, it is still disappointing. Concerned Women for America (CWA) and its more than half-a-million members around the country will continue to do all we can to see that our men and women in uniform are governed with the respect and resources needed to do the hard task of fighting for and protecting our freedoms.

“God help us,” lamented Denny Burk of the Southern Baptist Convention, who seemed to suggest that women shouldn’t be in the armed forces at all:

Are the fortunes of women in our country really enhanced by sending them to be ground up in the discipline of a combat unit and possibly to be killed or maimed in war? Is there a father in America who would under any circumstance risk having his daughter shot or killed in battle? Is there a single husband in this country who thinks it okay for his wife to risk being captured by our enemies? To risk becoming a prisoner of war? Is this the kind of people we want to be? Perhaps this is the kind of people we already are. I would sooner cut off my arm than allow such a thing with my own wife and daughters. Why would I ever support allowing someone else’s to do the same? Why would anyone?

What kind of a society puts its women on the front lines to risk what only men should be called on to risk? In countries ravaged by war, we consider it a tragedy when the battle comes to the backyards of women and children. Why would we thrust our own wives and daughters into that horror? My own instinct is to keep them as far from it as possible. Perhaps this move makes sense with an all volunteer force, but what if the draft is ever reinstituted? Are we really going to be the kind of people who press our wives and daughters to fight in combat?

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Everyone in America ought to be scandalized by this news, but I’m wondering if it will even register on the radar of anyone’s conscience. To the extent that it doesn’t, we reveal just how far gone we are as a people. God help us.

Aaron Ahlert of FrontPageMag said the move is “sure to have deadly consequences” and represents the Obama administration “forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat.”

It didn’t take long for the Obama administration to advance a pernicious piece of its promised radical agenda. Two days after the president laid out his far-left vision during the inauguration, senior defense officials announced that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will lift the military’s ban on women serving in combat. The move overturns a 1994 provision that prohibited them from being assigned to ground combat units. Panetta has given the various service branches until 2016 to come up with exemptions, and/or make any arguments about what roles should still reman closed to women. Thus, another bit of gender radicalism has been shoved down the nation’s throat through executive fiat — and this one is sure to have deadly consequences.

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It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that sexual tension, regardless of the legitimate or illegitimate motivation behind it, would be lessened under front line, life-threatening combat conditions. Nor is it inconceivable to think that close personal relationships of a sexual nature would make some soldiers take the kind of unnecessary risks to save a lover that might not only endanger themselves, but their entire unit.

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Once again, elections have consequences. Barack Obama has made it clear that part of his progressive agenda includes forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat, absent any input from Congress. Once, the United States military was all about projecting lethal power around the globe to protect America’s interests. Now, it is all about promoting diversity, inclusion and equality of outcome, irrespective of military readiness and cohesion. For progressives, who have elevated political correctness above all else–national security included–such radical egalitarianism is cause for celebration. For Donnelly and countless other Americans, it is anything but. “No one’s injured son should have to die on the streets of a future Fallujah because the only soldier near enough to carry him to safety was a five-foot-two 110-pound woman,” she contends.

Truth in Action Ministries has released their “2012 Issues Guide for Christian Voters” [PDF], which argues that federal spending on social services “goes against what the Bible says about caring for one’s own and others” and pushing for bans on abortion rights, stem cell research and emergency contraception. The group also warns of “radical judges” and an “out-of-control judiciary,” the “dangerous and destructive” health care reform law and the “false religion” of environmentalism.

But of course, no Religious Right voter guide goes without a section on gay rights, and Truth in Action Ministries tells members that END will “impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace” and that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has started “Maoist-style ‘re-education’ in ‘diversity.’” The group also claims the repeal law will “violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually” and “jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS”

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). But in 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down the state’s marriage law, and the state began issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses six months later, despite no change in the law. And in May 2012, a federal appeals court in Boston declared DOMA unconstitutional.

All candidates should be asked how they will defend marriage from this radical assault. It’s not enough to say they favor marriage if they also support same-sex “civil unions,” “domestic partnerships,” or “sexual orientation” laws, all of which incentivize homosexual relationships and devalue marriage. They should also be questioned about:

• The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace;

• A constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union only of one man and one woman;

• New policies giving marital benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Servicemen and women put their lives on the line. They deserve policies that ensure maximum military readiness and the best chance to win wars and return home alive. That’s why Congress overwhelmingly passed a law in 1993 incorporating as policy the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s ban on homosexual sodomy. But now the federal government has overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” We believe this is profoundly immoral on several levels. It would:

• Hurt unit cohesion, morale, retention, and recruitment;

• Violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually;

• Jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS;

• Force chaplains to resign or to jettison God’s Law in favor of political correctness;

• Subject all personnel to Maoist-style “re-education” in “diversity.”

Likewise, Congress should resist any effort eliminate women’s combat exemption.

While Truth in Action Ministries recently informed us that the “radical homosexual agenda” is the iceberg out to sink the ship that is America, it turns out that the plot is even thicker, as it appears that feminism and evolution are also culprits in the country’s devastation. Today on the group’s flagship radio program Truth that Transforms, Doug Phillips of Vision Forum appeared to discuss an event he organized in Branson, Missouri, “to celebrate [the] Christian Legacy of Titanic’s sinking.”

“Though more than 1,500 people died in this international tragedy, the Darwinian notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ was rejected in favor of the age-old Christian doctrine that the ‘strong sacrifice for the weak,’” Phillips said in a statement.

As Julie Ingersoll in Religion Dispatches notes, “as is often the case with ‘providential history,’ the actual history is distorted to tell make specific theological points”:

By percentage, twice as many women in third class died as did women in first class; children in first class had nearly three times the survival rate of those in third. One would only use "raw numbers" if one was trying to make a point not supported by the numbers.

In biblical patriarchy, the refrain of "women and children first" hides an agenda whereby the women are "first" only insofar as they keep their place which is subordinate to men.

On Truth that Transforms, Phillips pointed to an 1898 shipwreck on the French ship La Bourgogne where hundreds of women and children died, blaming it on “a culture that embraced evolution” and “the French Revolution which had rejected biblical Christianity and embraced paganism.” He went on to argue that the theory of evolution ultimately leads to the growth of feminism, and the “result is babies are killed en masse, women are treated like chattel and men no longer take on their masculine role as defenders.” The host, former Concerned Women for America president Carmen Pate, later bemoaned that evolution and feminism have “infiltrated” almost all aspects of society:

Phillips: People that were on board the deck of the Titanic at that time were individuals that grew up in a culture which was distinctively Christian in its perspective of the role of men and women and there’s an interesting contrast because in the year 1898 a French vessel called La Bourgogne sunk and when it sunk the sailors and the officers literally threw women and children into the water, beat them over the head, and the men lived and the women died. It sent shockwaves throughout the entire world, people said, ‘how could such a thing happen?’ And in trying to understand why that happened, the commentary was, they grew up in a culture that embraced evolution, it was the struggle of the survival of the fittest, they grew up in the culture of the French Revolution which had rejected biblical Christianity and embraced paganism and the consequences were that men treat women horrifically.

Now we flash forward to the year 2012 and this year our president has finally taken us over the abyss and we have full-fledged commitment to women in the frontlines of combat in overseas battles, we need to understand that that’s the first time in the history of the West that any nation has formally endorsed such a thing and it represents a radical departure from the values that were on board the ship in 1912.

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Phillips: Evolution says the struggle of the survival of the fittest, there are no differences between men and women, there is no charity, there is no deference, and in an evolutionary world feminism reaches its height and we see no distinctions. The result is babies are killed en masse, women are treated like chattel and men no longer take on their masculine role as defenders.

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Pate: As you’ve pointed out, throughout society for thousands of years we have looked at the protection of the innocent as of utmost importance and yet as we’ve allowed evolution and feminism to infiltrate our education system, even our churches and certainly our entertainment, our the media, we have lost sight of what God’s word has said about the protection of the innocent.