Tuesday, March 13, 2007

the peter principal, in general

General Peter Pace: "I believe that homosexual acts between individuals[*] are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts." General Pace said he believed homosexuality was like adultery, the military doesn't condone either. [source]
Peter, Peter, Peter.

General Pace thinks the queers are immoral. No major surprise there (I
am a pun-lovin fool). However, when in uniform, speaking as a military leader (not as Peter Pace The Everyman Self-Righteous Prick) he is not smart enough to keep his own holier-than-thou ideas private (
make me stop).

Here's the obvious problem with aiming that moral flamethrower
: there is no end to the list of things or people that an individual might label "immoral." So pretty soon, everything's on fire. And everyone's incendiary is pointed in a different direction. If PP finds adultery immoral and homosexuality immoral and behaviors worthy of military punishment, what's to stop him from throwing interracial marriage into the conflagration? Or gamblers? Or atheists? Or women who work while their husbands are at home raising the chitlins?

It's a Pandora's box old Pete is opening up and it's got teeth. I'm not saying he doesn't have the right to his own ignorant opinions. I just don't think he ought to be espousing them from the military pulpit.

*one more thing, and this is just my wordsmithing pettiness, but this phrase "homosexual acts between individuals" has gotten stuck in my craw. Does this imply that homosexual acts between groups are okie-dokie? Or is he reassuring us that that homosexual acts between, let's say, two fruitflies or two german shepherds are not a punishable military offense?

3 comments:

Barry Baxter said...

I love the fact that this lesson in morality is being brought to us by a guy whose career is all about killing people.

Anonymous said...

The beauty of immorality is there is no absolute, objective definition.

Just because sex for the purposes of pleasure is not "moral" for this guy, it doesn't mean that this belief is shared by anyone (or everyone) else. Saying it is a societal thing is a red herring; try getting 100% (or even 51%) consensus on ANYTHING by society.

As for what Barry said, double-plus good, and add the following mental exercise from the Rude Pundit (warning: link may be unpalatable for neocons; people who trust our govt w/o question; and ann coulter/michelle malkin dittohead idjits).

Anonymous said...

I ran into General Pace at the Poop Deck in Galveston the other day and he looked MARVELOUS!