Rep. Duncan Hunter

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) offered one of the more bizarre GOP arguments yesterday against repeal of the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell policy’.

In an interview with NPR’s Melissa Block [clip below] last night on All Things Considered, Hunter raised the specter of “hermaphrodites and transgenders” in uniform as a reason to maintain the policy:

… I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.

BLOCK: Transgenders and hermaphrodites?

Rep. HUNTER: Yeah, thats going to be part of this whole thing. Its not just gays and lesbians. Its a whole gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual community. If you're going to let anybody no matter what preference - what sexual preference they have that means the military is going to probably let everybody in.

Later Hunter dismissed Adm. Mullen’s support for repeal by saying that he’s a “political appointee”. He didn’t mention that both Chief of Staff Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were first appointed by President George W. Bush.

Elsewhere on NPR’s site, author Philip Gold, a former Marine offers a reasoned argument for immediate repeal of the policy:

Listen: Rep. Hunter raises fear factor against repeal of DADT [contd.]

Gold recalls that when he was a Marine, at a time when racial tensions were high, “the policy was simple. ‘We can’t control your thoughts and feelings. We will control your behavior.’”

He suggests that the same kind of policy would allow the military to uniquely handle any tension that might develop from those who have been trained to hate gay people.

He writes:

And might it not be asked: Is it the American way to exclude entire groups on the basis of who might not like them? And if avoiding gays is so important to some people that they might not enlist or re-enlist, are they really the people we need fighting our culturally sensitive wars? And who else might they dislike?

In order to integrate gays into the military, all that is necessary is to repeal the legal exclusion and, regarding fraternization, consensual sex and sexual harassment and assault, institute one set of rules for everybody, strictly and fairly enforced as a primary leadership responsibility at all levels. And in so doing, it would be well to remember that gentlemanly and gentlewomanly conduct can remove a lot of friction.