It’s neither meant as a commentary nor an indictment, but I have more military experience than all 10 of the remaining major-party presidential candidate. That’s just a fact.
I bring that up not because I served, but rather to point out when I served.
I enlisted in the U.S. Navy through the Delayed Entry Program in March of 1991. I attended boot camp later that year at Recruit Training Command Orlando—those of you who are familiar with the area know that it was located near the present-day Baldwin Park—and I joined the fleet as full-fledged sailor on Dec. 31 of that year.
A little more than 12 months later, Bill Clinton became the commander in chief, bringing with him an era of social experimentation in the military that was unprecedented, and continues to have far-reaching negative impacts on our national defense to this day. Among the more famous was “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
But I also witnessed other, less reported, changes. Among them:
• When I attended boot camp, unless you had a medical excuse from a doctor, you did everything in your steel-toed safety boots (boondockers) and your enlisted cover (for the guys, we called them “Dixie cups” or “dog dishes”). Under the “kindlier, gentler Navy,” they switched to sneakers and baseball caps.
• When I attended boot camp, everyone qualified for marksmanship in boot camp at the on-base firing range. A few months later, it was shut down for repairs, but never re-opened once Clinton took office.
• Mandatory “gender sensitivity” training for everyone, regardless of rank, which resulted in a three-fold increase in (mostly unfounded) claims of sexual harassment. The irony there wasn’t lost on anyone in the room; we all knew the “stories” about Bill Clinton.
But the biggest change, by far, was the “integration” of male and female boot camp companies. Previously, companies (now called divisions at RTC Great Lakes) were segregated by gender. Under Clinton, they ate, drilled, and attended classes together, but slept and showered separately.
On paper, it probably sounded pretty simple, but in practice, it was anything but. For starters, the men’s and women’s physical fitness requirements were completely different. “Meeting in the middle” meant reducing the force readiness of men in order to allow women to work alongside them.
But it was much more than that. Part of the discipline training one receives in boot camp includes learning how to march in formation. But men’s and women’s “stride lengths” were different. Once again, they decided to meet in middle, which resulted in some rather comical situations as the companies attempted the transition.
They haven’t so much worked out the kinks in the 20-some years since then, but rather came to accept the results. But when your goal is to make the Navy a “force for good” rather than a projection of your nation’s military might (as a warning) for the rest of the world, that’s what you get.
The U.S. Navy has never been the same since.
Now, before you hit “send” on that email denouncing my misogyny, let me make it clear that I don’t have a problem with women volunteering to serve their nation’s military in a support role. I do, however, have a problem with lowering the standards in order to facilitating the change of our military into a force for social change.
But now the social-change geniuses at the Pentagon want to take it a step further. After putting women in front-line combat roles, they now want to require women to sign up for the draft through the Selective Service Act.
I will go to prison, gladly, before I allow my daughters to be forced to serve in the military ahead of any able-bodied man.
That’s a position that is fully supported in the Bible. And it’s a position fully supported by the Framers of the Constitution, the document every member of the military swears to defend upon enlistment or commissioning as an officer.
For starters, let’s look at the biblical side of this. My good friend, Cary Gordon, pastor of Cornerstone World Outreach in Sioux City, Iowa, recently laid out these passages of Scripture, which support this view:
Only men were counted to go to war (Num. 1:2-3).
Only sons were chosen for war (1 Sam. 8:11).
Only men went to war (Gen. 14:14-15).
Daughters served in domestic roles (1 Sam. 8:13).
Wives and children did not go to war (Deut. 3:19–20).
Women welcomed men back from war; never did they return with them (1 Sam. 18:6-7).
And now for the Framers. Keep in mind, these were men of immense knowledge by today’s standards. It’s been suggested Thomas Jefferson quite possibly knew everything a human being could possibly know in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. And judging by the fact his personal library was donated to replace the Library of Congress when it was lost in the burning of Washington, it’s altogether possible.
The overwhelming majority of those men knew the Bible inside and out. Jefferson, having studied Hebrew and Greek, had attempted—probably poorly—to create a true English-language translation that could serve as the American version. He never finished it, but the point is that the Founders were very well-aware of what the Bible said about self-governance.
Jefferson’s protege was a young Virginian named James Madison. He, too, had an immense wealth of knowledge, which he put into practice in the political arena. In many ways, you could say he was the early 19th-century version of Ron Paul (minus the left-of-center libertarian social views).
He was a chief architect of the Constitution. And like Jefferson, he understood government never has the authority to commit or sanction evil. The Framers all understood that, which is why they, too, would have opposed placing women—much less conscripting them—on the front lines of war.
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