Come On, Protect the Motherland

There are (at least) two striking omissions in today's USA Today op-ed defending the exclusion of gays from the American military. Interestingly, the author cites the integration of the British military, saying that emulating the 2000 lifting of the ban on gay soldiers would harm the American military, without stopping to consider whether it's harmed the British military. Wouldn't it be nice, after all, to have recourse to, you know, empirical facts rather than dire speculation? The only problem, alas, is that the results so far don't support that position, though the same apocalyptic predictions were made there before the ban was lifted.

The other is by way of this passing reference to the expulsion of gay Arabic-speaking linguists from the armed forces:

At the Defense Language Institute, homosexual students who were not eligible for the Army were enrolled in the place of other trainees who were.

Apparently, there are droves of qualified people with Arabic language skills, and these selfish folks grabbed their spots. Never mind those wild rumors of a "shortage" of such qualified candidates we've been hearing about.