Not As Far Off As You Think

The San Francisco School Board voted 4-2 yesterday to resolve to eliminate the Junior Reserve Office Training Corps (JROTC) program.

The resolution passed says the military’s ban on openly gay soldiers violates the school district’s equal rights policy for gays. The school district and the military currently share the $1.6 million annual cost of the program. About 1,600 San Francisco students participate in JROTC at seven high schools across the district.

Cadets and instructors who spoke at the meeting and rallied outside argued that the program teaches leadership, organizational skills, personal responsibility and other important values.

“This is where the kids feel safe, the one place they feel safe,” said Robert Powell, a JROTC instructor. “You’re going to take that away from them?”

Unmentioned in the story; the program is especially popular in heavily-minority inner city schools, among parents who can’t afford private schools but want something in their students’ day that instills some form of discipline, pride and self-respect (as opposed to self-esteem) among their students.

To his credit, mayor Gavin Newsom criticized the resolution:

Mayor Gavin Newsom called severing ties with the JROTC “a bad idea” that penalized students without having any practical effect on the Pentagon’s policy on gays in the military.

Indeed.

Now, here’s the dirty little secret; the left – awash as they claim to be in concern for the well-being of minority students – hate JROTC. There is a faction in the Saint Paul School Board and the Administration that is actively seeking to bar JROTC from St. Paul schools – not primarily because of “Don’t Ask…”, but because they just don’t like the military.

I’d love to get some Democrats on the local school board on record about this.

5 thoughts on “Not As Far Off As You Think

  1. And you’ll never get them to go on record. I don’t think we were ever asked in any of our several debates last year when I ran. It’s obvious in their response to Public Comments (they can discuss the comments when they see fit, but it is NOT a give and take at School Board meetings) that they have “concerns’ over JROTC; they’ll grudgingly admit that the majority of JROTC members are minorities. And the fact that a young Hmong woman from Arlington got into (can’t remember which) an academy…West Point?….had nothing to do with the discipline and leadership skills she learned in JROTC, rather it was the superior education she received. Uh huh.
    If there were more white kids in JROTC, it would be gone in a New York minute, but they can’t afford to offend the parents (oops, I meant VOTERS) who love the program.

  2. I think this is a reasonable reason for barring JROTC.

    Fundamentally – in private business and private life, I think that everyone should be able to make their own decisions and if they are prejudiced, that’s really up to them.

    However, when public money is involved and even more so when public resources are involved, discrimination without a damn good reason is not OK. (Note, I’m against affirmative action for the same reason. A case may have been made for it just after declarations of equality but enough time has gone by that I can’t see the case any more).

    If a state or a locality allows discrimination (that isn’t in violation of the constitution) then it would make sense for them to give organizations that have that sort of discrimination access. Agism is a good example of a place where we apply considered discrimination – there are a lot of rights we don’t grant minors and these do impact public moneys and institutions.

    However, if an institution violates state or locality (or constitutional) discrimination laws, it should not be given any advantaged access to public moneys, institutions or resources. It shouldn’t be barred from them any more than any other private individual or organization, but it shouldn’t be given access.

    I am an Eagle Scout, but I don’t think scouts should be granted any special access to public institutions in areas with laws against orientation based discrimination. If they got rid of their rules against having gays in scouts, that’d be a different thing.

    Similarly, if the JROTC bans gay students, I don’t think it should have any special access to public moneys or access to the public school system.

    Of course, the answer I see is clear. Let gays in the military.

    We have women in the military so the whole issue of not serving with people you might find sexually attractive is a non-starter. When you’re in uniform, you’re a soldier. When you’re at home with your partner, it really isn’t anyone’s business but your own.

    If JROTC allows full access of the program to teens who are gay (or teens who think they might be gay), then this issue should be a non-starter. If it does not, then it should be subject to a state or localities discrimination laws.

  3. I don’t have a dog in the fight; I think that if the Brit and Israeli militaries don’t have a problem with gays, ours might not need to, either.

    But the JROTC doesn’t “ban” gay students; it asks them to leave their sexuality at the door. It says “we don’t care if you’re gay – but sexuality isn’t really what we do here in JROTC”. I’d have no problem with demanding straight students leave theirs at the door, either, if that’d satisfy the legal rigamarole.

    But I think it’d be interesting if the military (or at least the SF JROTC program) openly accepted gays, if for only one reason; to see the re-vote in the SF School Board. Because I’ll almost guaranteee that the four votes would stay; they’d just change their rationale.

  4. On re-reading my response, I realize I misspoke.

    JROTC does care about the students’ sexuality – per US military policy, gays are not permitted, but also not actively sought out. While I do understand gays’ objections to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, the goal of JROTC (and the military) really doesn’t go into extensive exploration of ones’ sexual identity. Since school itself should not really be about sexual identity, it seems unreasonable to demand JROTC allow a degree of “sensitivity” to childrens’ sexual orientation than school should.

    But I don’t believe for a moment that this is about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. It’s an easy pretext that the SFSB’s using to take its shot at JROTC.

  5. It is unfortunate then that this discrimination has left them so open for attack.

    At this point, I am forced to support those who say “This is a discriminatory organization and it is against our policy to support organizations with this sort of discrimination.”

    If they were incorrect on any point in that statement, I would not support them, but at this point, JROTC does practice discrimination of a form not accepted by these public organizations.

    The solution, of course, is very straight forward. Sorry for the pun.

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