Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall is trying to reinstate a statewide DADT policy for the Virginia National Guard. To his credit, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell opposes it. Amanda Hess comments:
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has done little to reduce the stunning numbers of sexual assault in the military. In fact, some servicewomen who have fended off assaults have actually been accused of being gay for refusing to submit to male assailants. And while men do assault other men in the military, they assault women at ten times that rate. A small number of cases also involve female assailants, who assault both men and other women.
Unwanted sexual advances affect thousands of military servicemen and women each year—and that’s only counting completed sexual assaults, not cases of “this guy who’s got eyes on me.” Under Marshall’s rationale, people of all genders and sexual orientations should be excluded from military service, lest they rape someone (or simply look at him sideways). But judging from the delegate’s creative riffs on “sodomy” figures, it seems that the presence of gay men on the battlefield is more “distracting” to Marshall than are actual rapists.
Obviously Marshall is being somewhat selective, but I’m actually not sure I want to hear what he thinks about sexual assaults on women in the military.