Your panel discussion on gays
in the military was remarkable
in that it did not even mention
the experiences of other
countries. Canada, for example,
successfully integrated gays in
the military some years ago,
and the UK is now slated to
follow the same path. Brigadier
General Daniel E. Munro, the
director general for personnel
policy in the Canadian Forces,
was quoted in the Washington
Post as saying, "We would not
have been able to prove that
[homosexuality] had that
deleterious effect on cohesion
and morale that everyone talked
about. Basically, we realized
that we didn't have the
evidentiary foundation ... It
just wasn't there, I mean, you
can't use the old cohesion and
morale arguments just based on
folklore. You have to be able
to prove this stuff." If only
U.S. military officials could
speak with such honesty!

                                                   

-- Jeffrey Shallit