As Republican leaders express their outrage at service members marching in a San Diego pride parade in uniform, Religious Right activists aren’t holding back either. In her radio alert yesterday, Mission America’s Linda Harvey accused the military personnel who marched in the parade of bringing “disgrace to the uniform and to America”:
Harvey: The San Diego homosexual pride parade on Saturday, July 21st, broke new ground. For the first time the Pentagon allowed members of the military to dress in full uniform at an event with a political agenda, and what an agenda it is. If you haven’t been to a pride parade recently, or ever, it’s not anything to be proud of. The uniform of our country was allowed to honor a display featuring men dressed as women, people in virtually no clothing at all and in your face advocacy of every aspect of homosexuality. How low will this present administration stoop before Americans say ‘we’ve had enough’? Here’s how the decision went down: there were concerns that some military members would march in uniform with or without permission so the big brass caved and said OK. Now think about that, because men and women who have taken an oath were planning to disobey standing protocol, their superiors decided to let them. The Pentagon says the exception is only for this parade but do any of us truly believe that?
This signals much more than an endorsement of deviance, it signals a breakdown of order. It’s also an exception that would not be extended to any groups but those on the left, could conservative soldiers appear in uniform at a Tea Party rally? Of course not, it’s only the homosexual lobby that gets this kind of deference. There were approximately three hundred service members signed up to march in this parade, that friends is a disgrace to the uniform and to America.
No debate about the military’s approach to gay and lesbian service members can be complete without a comment from Elaine Donnelly, who told Janet Parshall yesterday that participants wearing the uniform brought “discredit upon the Armed Forces”:
Later, Donnelly said the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell undermined the military’s commitment to “selfless service”:
Donnelly: Connect the dots here, how far is the military going to go with this? Well, frankly, they don’t know. Because the administration is saying that LGBT equality is a paramount concern, it is actually a political concern, the President is trying to deliver on political promises to his LGBT base, the left if you will, and the Pentagon is helping him do it.
Parshall: So stunning that there has been a historic set of rules of deportment of where and when that uniform can be used, and it seems to me and you have made this point several times over the last few years, that we are kind of making it up as we go along.
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Donnelly: This is a special interest faction. We don’t have in our military, we shouldn’t have, special interest factions. We don’t have labor unions either. You don’t have groups that are more interested in their own interests than they are in the selfless support for the institution, for the mission. Selfless service is what the military is all about. When you start dividing up into special interest factions that start saying ‘we want this and we want that and we are different from everyone else and we are more special than everyone else,’ that’s when you really invite problems. So Janet, this is just beginning, this is LGBT law in the military.
