You have to hand it to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, as he just keeps trying out new reasons as to why Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should not be repealed, with his latest being that if it is, so many current soldiers will leave that the military will be forced to re-institute the draft:
Barack Obama is opposed to the draft as a matter of principle, to be sure. So are most politicians in both parties. But the president’s drive to repeal the ban on open homosexuality in the military could have this unintended consequence: It could bring back the draft.
…
The military is not a red state/blue state institution. It unifies our country. It draws its dedicated members from all regions. Still, it is no secret that the military is a socially conservative institution. It recruits heavily from rural areas in the South, the Midwest, and the Inter-Mountain states.
In our larger cities, black and Hispanic recruits are encouraged to consider the military — which has historically been a great ladder of achievement for racial and ethnic minorities.
These are the very areas and groups who have been most resistant to the demands of the homosexual lobby. These are the very regions and groups who have rallied to our side whenever we put a defense of marriage initiative on the ballot
If these regions and groups do not enlist in our all-volunteer force, President Obama will be driven to the place he does not want to go: the military draft.
Of course, during FRC’s own anti-DADT repeal webcast earlier this year Sergeant First Class Benjamin Ratcliff told Perkins point blank that soldiers who loved their country would continue to serve even if DADT was repealed:
I would tell them to serve anyway. If all men of courage and men that had a moral compass were to leave the military, then we wouldn’t have a military. There’d be nobody left to serve and protect. So I don’t really – I would serve regardless of what comes out of Washington. Even though I disagree with it strongly, I love my country more. So I would understand if parents had concerns. I was recruited for several years and I sat and listened to parents’ concerns, talked with them. They asked me a lot of questions about the wars and a lot about the liberal agenda. But I would tell them, serve anyway, absolutely.
But I guess that tends to undermine Perkins’ anti-gay agenda, so he decided to just ignore it when penning this op-ed.
