California Congressman evokes bathrooms, showers and hermaphrodites to defend Don't Ask, Don't Tell

As the debate over the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” continues on Capitol Hill, Congressman Duncan Hunter [R-Calif.]’s dependence upon arcane homophobic stereotypes during an interview with National Public Radio is nothing more than an utterly desperate attempt to defend a failed policy.

“It’s not the time to do it,” he told Melissa Block yesterday afternoon. “I think it’s—the military is not civilian life. And I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gay and lesbians.”

I truly wish I could make this you know what up, but the failed presidential candidate’s defense of DADT became even more foolish as he highlighted the ‘young kids’ who comprise the majority of those who enlist in the military.

“They usually have more conservative families, more conservative backgrounds and I think that it would go against their principles and it would frankly make everybody a little bit uneasy to be in these close situations, how you go into combat, you know, the shower situation, the bathroom situation, just, you know, very mundane details—things that we have men and women separated, you know, because we don’t want to have that sexual distraction,” Duncan rather nervously said.

The shower situation? The bathroom situation? Sexual distraction? Again, you truly can’t make this you know what up, but Congressman Joe Sestak [D-Pa.,] who is a retired Navy admiral, pointed out to Brian Lehrer earlier this morning the average age of the 5,000 sailors he commanded on an aircraft carrier were 19 and a half.

“That generation doesn’t have concerns over serving with or alongside a gay sailor,” he said.

Sestak also responded directly to Duncan.

“When you’re out there in a fox hole and people are shootin’ at ya, you’re not concerned whether the person next to you is anything but good—and these sailors are good,” he said.

There you have it…