Matt Barber: Retain ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ because the blood of gays is diseased

Right-wing pundit Matt Barber writes at WorldNetDaily today in favor of retaining the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” ban on gay members of the military serving openly. Barber likens gayness to “a host of malignant behaviors” like “illicit drug use or habitual criminality,” as well as to banal maladies such as myopia and flat feet. He quotes “long-established findings” that were based on an acceptance of anti-gay bias that isn’t acceptable any longer. His trump card for doubters, though, is that there is also a solid medical reason to keep the gays out of the military. It’s the blood: Gay men have higher rates of HIV and Hepatitis infections, which means that on the battlefield they could infect other soldiers and compromise readiness!

matt barber

There is no case cited anywhere in the piece where an infected gay man’s blood on the battlefield caused infection to a fellow soldier as a result of an emergency transfusion or splattering or anything. There will never be such a case cited, of course.

Lesbians are also curiously absent entirely from Barber’s analysis. Presumably they have clean blood but should still suffer discrimination. You wonder reading the piece whether Barber even knows that there are women soldiers. He sounds like he comes from the time before there were.

He also refers to gay men as “MSM” which stands for “Men who have Sex with Men,” a sort of clinical term he has adopted to give his medical ruminations on the gays more authority. It’s also clearly kind of more sexually evocative, which I think Barber likes too, being that maybe it gives him a tingly sensation of disgust and curiosity. Which is fine in his personal life but not as a policy prescription.

Some Barber gems:

The U.S. military has always discriminated. There are a host of malignant behaviors such as illicit drug use or habitual criminality that can render a person ineligible to serve. As my father-in-law learned, there are also benign maladies such as vision impairment or flat feet that can bar an otherwise eligible applicant. Any number of behaviors or conditions with varying degrees of severity can dash one’s hope of donning the uniform.

In formal recognition of the long-established finding that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service,” federal law – Section 654, Title 10 – objectively prescribes the following…

# The prohibition against homosexual conduct is a long-standing element of military law that continues to be necessary in the unique circumstances of military service;

# The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability;

Reasons for incompatibility [of military gays and straights] are manifold. They are firmly rooted in both common sense and in the “settled” anthropological, sociopolitical and medical sciences, as well as the theological arena. Taken alone, each provides ample justification for maintaining the status quo. Combined, they prove the case. For now – in the interest of brevity – we’ll focus on but one: medical science.

Consider that current U.S. health regulations prohibit men who have sex with men (MSM – aka “gays”) from donating blood. Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration categorically confirm that if MSM were permitted to give blood, the general population would be placed at risk.

Do the math: If “gays” are allowed to serve openly – as to appease leftists’ euphemistic demands for “tolerance” and “diversity” – how much more would soldiers in the field – where battlefield blood transfusions and frequent exposure to biohazards are commonplace – face pointless peril?

Yesterday in announcing he was introducing legislation to repeal DADT, Colorado Sen. Mark Udall cited a Congressional Budget Office estimate putting the cost of DADT at $200 million since it went into effect.

“We put a lot of time and energy and money into these people and then we put a lot of time and money and energy into discharging them. It makes no sense,” he said.

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