2008 Woodie Awards
Letter to the Editor
Issue date: 3/22/06 Section: Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor,
Your editorial in the STAR last week (15 March 06, 55:7) notes -- with some enthusiasm, apparently -- the U S Supreme Court's recent decision that the Solomon Amendment is Constitutional. This is the Federal law that blackmails universities into allowing military recruiters on campus, even though the military's anti-gay agenda violates campus anti-discrimination policies, by threatening to deny them all Federal funds, even Pell grants for students.
You "don't see why the military can't come onto campus and offer career opportunities" like the Target Corporation does, even though Target has to promise to be non-discriminatory and the military doesn't? What, you're a discrimination enthusiast? "Let's hear it for prejudice!!!"
But then your editorial swerves onto the premise that all anti-military picketing is really based on some other concerns, which you totally disapprove of without serious inquiry as to what they might be. This is totally contradictory. Didn't it occur to you that the reason the gay community pickets on-campus recruiters is that its members might want to join the military but aren't allowed to? And, by the way, doesn't it seem pretty silly for the military to rule out a whole class of people for possible military service when military recruitment successes are at an all-time low because of the unpopularity of the Iraq War? Seems like if you're so gung-ho behind the military and the imperialist wars they are now being directed to fight, you ought to be out there on the picket lines with the gays, fighting for their right to serve their country.
If you believe college students are "capable of making their own decisions without their mommies and daddies ...", don't you think that if they are considering a military career after graduation they're also capable of finding the nearest off-campus military recruiting center?
--Author unknown
Your editorial in the STAR last week (15 March 06, 55:7) notes -- with some enthusiasm, apparently -- the U S Supreme Court's recent decision that the Solomon Amendment is Constitutional. This is the Federal law that blackmails universities into allowing military recruiters on campus, even though the military's anti-gay agenda violates campus anti-discrimination policies, by threatening to deny them all Federal funds, even Pell grants for students.
You "don't see why the military can't come onto campus and offer career opportunities" like the Target Corporation does, even though Target has to promise to be non-discriminatory and the military doesn't? What, you're a discrimination enthusiast? "Let's hear it for prejudice!!!"
But then your editorial swerves onto the premise that all anti-military picketing is really based on some other concerns, which you totally disapprove of without serious inquiry as to what they might be. This is totally contradictory. Didn't it occur to you that the reason the gay community pickets on-campus recruiters is that its members might want to join the military but aren't allowed to? And, by the way, doesn't it seem pretty silly for the military to rule out a whole class of people for possible military service when military recruitment successes are at an all-time low because of the unpopularity of the Iraq War? Seems like if you're so gung-ho behind the military and the imperialist wars they are now being directed to fight, you ought to be out there on the picket lines with the gays, fighting for their right to serve their country.
If you believe college students are "capable of making their own decisions without their mommies and daddies ...", don't you think that if they are considering a military career after graduation they're also capable of finding the nearest off-campus military recruiting center?
--Author unknown