[GPRI] David McReynolds: General Pace's Skewed Morality

[John Gallagher]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/16/general_paces_skewed_morality.php

General Pace's Skewed Morality
David McReynolds 
March 16, 2007

    David McReynolds was on the staff of the War
Resisters League for many years, and, as the Socialist
Party candidate in 1980 and 2000, the first openly gay
person to run for the U.S. presidency. He lives with
two cats on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

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When General Peter Pace presented his view that
homosexuality was immoral, I thought, "Good heavens,
there is a danger the military may be infused with
moral concerns—this could lead to mass desertions at
the highest level."

Leaving to one side the question of whether
homosexuality is immoral (though not before noting
that Jesus, who had clear views on many issues, never
uttered a single recorded word on this subject), if
the general is to take up moral issues, surely there
should be a certain priority. If, in the course of his
busy day, he gets a chance to think about it, which
would be more immoral: two soldiers making love or any
soldier shooting people in another country, at the
order of the president, for the clear purpose of
gaining control over the oil in that country? If we
learned anything from Nuremberg, it was that wars of
aggression are a crime against humanity. We also know
that torture violates international treaties, and yet
torture has been an intrinsic part of the U.S.
misadventure in Iraq.

In my youth, then a devout believer and a member of
the Baptist Church, I had serious struggles
reconciling my homosexuality with the "social
controls" that taught me that I was trapped in sin. I
long ago resolved those conflicts (and, in the
process, became what might be called a "religious
atheist"). Of course I believe that homosexuals and
lesbians must have the same rights as any other person
to serve in the U.S. military.

The issue, however, is whether those of us who have
had to go through this intense struggle to gain
self-knowledge—some sense of what is truly right and
wrong—should not also have learned that our very
process of facing painful decisions made us more aware
than the average person of just what is truly immoral.
The gay and lesbian struggle should focus—must
focus—on the fact that the war in Iraq is a criminal
adventure, in violation of the United Nations charter.
There is not a question of this realization being
"left" or "right"—rather, it is a question of right
and wrong. If, on the one hand, we demand military
service be open to our gay and lesbian brothers and
sisters, surely, on the other hand, we must urge them
to avoid such service when they may find themselves
used as pawns of what the ruling class perceives as
its interests. (And the interests of those who run a
country are usually quite different from the interests
of the rest of us.)

There was another aspect to General Pace's comments
which should cause all of us—left, right, gay,
lesbian—to pause. Increasingly we find the U.S.
military is being systematically infected by a kind of
Christian fundamentalism which is concerned with the
"moral questions" of sexuality—whether adultery or
homosexuality—but not concerned with the more basic
moral questions which have been addressed by all the
great religions—matters of social justice and
compassion.

It was precisely this concern which led to the death
of Jesus, to the murder of Gandhi, to the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A more
careful examination of what is moral and what is
immoral might lead the good general to resign his
post. A true sense of moral values often subverts the
existing order—never more so than today, when the U.S.
has become a rogue state.

As the son of a father who served his country in the
Army Air Force in World War II, and retired as a
lieutenant colonel, I respect—deeply—the role of the
military in trying to defend a country, even if my
pacifist beliefs lead me in a different direction. But
there is a vast difference between the defense of your
country, and the invasion of someone else's. Let us
hope that at some point this occurs to General Pace.

 



 
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