Kid... We don't like your kind.

In the ever growing list of idiotic phrases spouted by members of the Bush administration, in what seems to be an amazing example of who can look more stupid than the boss, Marine General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated Monday that he approved of the U.S. "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy on Gay and Lesbian people in the military. As if that statement (as well as the spineless, hypocritical, and antiquated policy it refers to) wasn't ridiculous enough, General Pace felt that it was necessary to expand upon his comments with a bit of militaristic theologizing.

"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," General Pace told the Chicago Tribune.

This of course begs the question of whether or not homosexual acts between THREE individuals might be okay, but perhaps the General hasn’t learned to count that far yet. Or perhaps the concept of two persons of the same sex engaged in “homosexual acts” is so repulsive that to move any deeper into the concept is simply too much for the old warrior to handle. General Pace did, however, add a bit more clarification on his position by stating, "As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior," he said.

I really don't know where to start with this one. First there's the basic stupidity of the policy, but that's been more or less beaten to death, so I'll leave that one alone. There is, of course, the blanket "I believe" statement that seems to, without further explanation or substantiation, simply lay forth a divine rule to be followed without question. This is much the same approach as Dubya himself took when asked if he had discussed the invasion of Iraq with his father, "I asked a higher authority" Shrub explained, in one short sentence both dismissing his father's larger experience and somewhat wiser counsel, and instantly blaming the entire Iraqi debacle on The Big Guy Upstairs.

Obviously feeling that his blanket statement needed some kind of exegetical expansion, the general went on to compare homosexuality with adultery. I suppose the idea that two people of the same sex might actually have a monogamous, committed relationship is something that the general has never contemplated either (if he reached that far, he'd probably have to vomit up his T-Bone), and so in his mind homosexuality (of whatever shape, size or color) is just the same as infidelity and it should be "prosecuted" as "immoral behavior." Of course, this really isn’t all that unusual in these days of retrograde inquisition. A really big segment of the American public, led by James Dobson and Pat Robertson, would feel very much the same way; people who believe a lot of things about what God likes and doesn’t like, feels and doesn’t feel. He also shares his perspective with a large percentage of state legislatures in this country who continue to support the antiquated sodomy laws that are still on the books in a wide range of states. No, the general is by no means alone. Homosexuality (along with adultery and no doubt a whole list of other personal sins) is immoral… case closed…. Let’s go eat.

The thing that I find most disturbing is that General Pace does not, of course, apply any of his intellectual mud wrestling and moral speculation to the various other activities engaged in by military personnel, activities like torture, robbery, or murder. For that matter, also unasked and unanswered are questions of the basic morality of invasion, assault, bombing and the inevitable side effect of the ever present “collateral damage.” These are the true questions of morality for the military, questions which cannot be asked, lest they have to be answered. As Dr. C.T. Vivien, a former associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said at a gathering I attended recently, “You can’t go reading Jesus when there’s a war on because if you start reading Jesus, then you can’t go!”

These are the real moral issues for our leaders, our military, our country and ourselves, and these moral issues are not even being imagined, let alone discussed, in either the rooms of power or most of the pulpits of the church. What does it mean to go to war with the whole world? What does it mean to throw out international goodwill and cooperation in exchange for crusading across the planet in the robes of New Empire? What does it mean to kill… anyone? What does it mean to truly seek peace? If those in power and those in the church would actually begin to explore these moral questions we might wind up with a discussion that is worth having. But those kinds of questions are uncomfortable to pose, because those kinds of questions don’t allow you to stand safely off to the side and sanctimoniously point your finger at the evil doings of others. Those kind of questions bring up the perspective of Jesus, most succinctly stated at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7.

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

There are a lot of confusing realities contained in the collected stories of the Bible. At the same time, there are some things that are about as straightforward as anything ever presented in human thought. It seems to me that this is one of those rather obviously clear places.

As they say in the commercial… General Pace, what’s in YOUR wallet?

Beyond all of the possible moral, ethical, legal and political issues that this matter brings up however, there stands one enduring image, something that popped into my mind instantly, even before I heard General Pace stop talking. It was with a strange sense of Déjà vu that I ran to my iTunes to find the story of another head muckity muck, in the U.S. army, 40 years ago, in another war. He was addressing the very same issues as General Pace… What is the necessary moral character of those we hire to KILL?

The story comes from Arlo Guthrie sitting on the Group W bench…


And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said. …

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-
58-words-we-wanna-know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-
the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-
pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-
arresting-officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-
thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

I went over to the sargeant, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind."

As a conclusion, and a call to action, Arlo suggested that it would be possible to stop the war by singing Alice’s Restaurant. At one point, he even proposed the very concept that would send General Pace (and Ann Coulter) into apoplexy.


And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.

So it’s my proposal that, in honor of both Arlo and General Pace that’s exactly what we should do… I am hereby calling for the Group W… no, no, no… Let’s call it The Group Q Bench this time - Alice’s Restaurant Anti- Massacre movement!

You wanna stop the war? Just click on the link and start singin’! Send it to someone... and then to someone else and get them to start singin’ too… and pretty soon the whole damn world will be singin…

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant