Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his Feb. 8 worldNetDaily column:
The U.S. military is being ordered to start accepting and recruiting active and open homosexuals into all services at the very same time it is prosecuting and imprisoning heterosexual adulterers.
This strikes me as somewhat schizophrenic.
If you doubt me, let me submit the case of William C. Gurney, the former top enlisted man for the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
On Jan. 28, the master sergeant was sentenced at a court-martial to 20 months in military prison and given a dishonorable discharge for sex-related charges with 10 female airmen.
Reports from the courtroom said he appeared stunned.
I'm not surprised. I'm stunned, too.
The question on the minds of many Americans upon hearing this news will be: "Is homosexual sex in the military OK, while heterosexual carousing is not?"
The charges he was convicted of include indecent conduct, dereliction of duty, adultery, failure to maintain professional relationships and misuse of government communications equipment including a computer, cell phone and e-mail account he used to send and receive sexually charged text messages and photos.
A law professor said the punishment was designed to send a message about how the Air Force is going to treat "sexual harassment." However, Gurney wasn't convicted of sexual harassment. He was convicted instead of adultery, among other charges.
Now, understand I don't have a problem with Gurney's conviction or his sentence.
I just question how the military can justify punishing and expelling adulterers while embracing open homosexuality.
To believe what Farah believes, one must gloss over, as he does, exactly what Gurney was accused of doing.
From a separate Dayton Daily News article from the one Farah linked to:
On Thursday, the jury deliberated more than six hours at Scott Air Force Base before finding Gurney guilty of mistreating two female airman by making repeated sexually offensive comments to them and pursuing sexual relationships with them.
The jury acquitted Gurney on three remaining charges, unwanted touching of an airman’s breasts and buttocks; and trying to influence Air Force personnel to assign two women he liked to where he would have access to them.
[...]
Gurney used his authority to find and zero in on the airmen he liked, Maj. Patricia Gruen, the government’s chief prosecutor, told the jury. He made one of the photos that highlighted his genitals and was electronically transmit to an airman in his AFMC office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Gruen said in her closing argument.
“He used this organization like his own personal Match.com,” Gruen told the jurors, known as court members in military parlance. “This is how Chief Gurney chose to use his prestigious position as a command chief.”
Arguably, adultery was the least of the offenses Gurney was guilty of. But Farah also appears to be ignorant of the military definition of adultery. From Slate:
Proving adultery under military guidelines is no mean prosecutorial feat. According to Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the prosecution must prove that the accused not only committed the indiscretion, but also that his or her conduct "was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces." In other words, the affair must somehow have hampered the military's ability to do its job—say, by lowering morale on a base, or by damaging the public's faith in the armed forces.
In April 2002, President Bush further discouraged adultery prosecutions by issuing an executive order that clarified the circumstances that might necessitate legal action. Although the order maintained that "adultery is clearly unacceptable conduct," it also listed a variety of factors that commanders should take into consideration before proceeding with a court martial. These include the accused's rank, the impact of the affair on the involved parties' job performance, and whether any of the hanky-panky took place while the accused was on the clock.
In other words, Gurney had to engage in much more than mere sexual intercourse with a woman who wasn't his wife to be convicted of adultery.
It's absurd for Farah to conflate adultery as defined by the military with mere gay sex. But he does anyway:
Adulterers have no political lobby. There are no pro-adultery organizations with any political clout. Adulterers don't get together and raise money for politicians to promote their lifestyle. Homosexuals, on the other hand, are extremely politically active.
Then again, Farah thinks adulterers should die. Imagine what he thinks should happen to gays.
