What you're missing is what I pointed out before. You're trying to excuse the OP's behavior based on other people's behavior. You're not staying on target. By your reasoning you would call a Commander hypocritical for enforcing DADT if he ever jaywalked. Make a different thread if you want discussing the nature of good order and discipline as it relates to Commanders who enforce laws even if they've broken one.
I keep asking myself what am I missing? You keep making non sequitur arguments in an attempt to justify breaking the law. You have said you aren't in the military and consequently, you will have a difficult time understanding the military environment. To you it probably seems ridiculous that other soldiers are affected when a soldier decides to come out of the closet. Whether DADT is right or wrong, or should be law or not, is something for you to take up with your governmental representatives. Those representatives think it causes a big enough problem when people "come out," to make a law that requires a discharge for soldiers who choose to do so. As odd as that may seem to you, that's the way it is in the military right now. The position you take of trying to justify breaking the law is indefensible to me. The OP knowingly made a conscious decision to break it.
What you call non sequiturs are my efforts at providing context for an arbitrarily enforced rule. Of course I'm engaging in moral relativism: it is self-evident that you can punish someone for murder, even if you made an illegal left turn into the gas chamber parking lot. There's a point, however: The rule of law, in order to be legitimate, needs to have a basis in some principal.
The principal here is homophobia, just as the principal for gender or race-based segregation was sexism or racism. The theory at the time was that blacks or women were in some way less capable soldiers than their white male counterparts. This has been illustrated to be untrue, and I hope you'll join me in agreeing that gays are the equal of a straight man or woman in their capacity.
The reason jaywalking is perceived to be a minor offense is because there doesn't exist a principal of safety: assuming you have functioning eyes and passable equilibrium, you'll probably arrive safely at the opposite curb. Just as you've committed minor offenses because the greater good (arriving more quickly) outweighed the de minimus harm (tiny chance of being hit by a rogue invisible vehicle), I'm willing to bet the OP joined the military in spite of his gay gene because the service to his country would ultimately outweigh someone possibly, maybe feeling skeezed out by taking a shower with him.
Like it or not, this country is founded on a guiding principal of equality amongst all its citizens and residents. I of course need not remind you that the military, although now marginalized to an entire sub-culture of citizens, works for the People. If someone in the year 2007 is still uncomfortable being in the same room as a gay person, my response is, "join the rest of us in this century". The military has a long history of having to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into line with updated broad social mores. That's not an insult, it's the outgrowth of a homogeneous demographic.
There's a reason the policy is called don't ask, don't tell. At its very heart, the prohibition isn't against
being gay, it's against
telling someone you're gay.
The OP joined with the intent of never telling anyone. That follows the spirit of the law, if not the letter.
