Don't Ask Don't Tell

I have been waiting for stupid to show up and in the October 21 edition of the St. Pete Times my patience was rewarded. Army veteran Russell Montminy of Spring Hill weighed in on the DADT policy in a letter to the editor entitled "Repeal is a bad idea."

Montminy stated, "I do not think the average soldier is going to appreciate that the person next to him in combat may be attracted to him or any other male soldiers sexually. It is just not right." Now there is a monumental "holy shit, are you kidding" moment if I ever read one. Personally, I would be more afraid of being in a combat situation with Montminy than I would with any presumed gay person. If he gets a hard-on when the firing starts, I would be worrying about which gun he grabs first. Does he know the difference? In my basic training we had to recite the mantra, "This is my rifle, this is my gun...one is for fighting, one is for fun." If he got confused and grabbed the wrong gun thingy, he could get both of us killed.

During my years in the Army and later in the Florida Air National Guard I was in training and contingency situations where there were bullets flying, shit exploding, the ground shaking and never once did I think about the sexual orientation of the person next to me. Even when my partner in the fox hole was a female, I never pondered what her bare butt would look like if she would slide those BDUs down from her smooth, supple...whoops, never mind. My train jumped the rails for a moment there. Truthfully, I was more concerned with my own ass than I was with hers...other than saving both of them, that is.

I was going to give Montminy the SOG City Oracle Hershey Squirt Award for coming up with this ludicrous argument for keeping the DADT policy, but he is 82 and quite possibly senile so I decided to be generous and just disagree with him.

As for Don't Ask Don't Tell, it is long overdue for repeal.