Cracks in Biden's wokester Pentagon? Military backs off from promoting gay culture
In the wake of the Bud Light boycott, something interesting is happening in the military, too.
According to Politico:
The Pentagon will no longer allow shows involving drag performers to be hosted at military facilities, a spokesperson said Thursday, enforcing a longstanding policy amid intensifying pressure from Republican lawmakers to cancel the practice.
Drag shows on military bases have been a contentious issue in recent months as part of a larger push by some Republican lawmakers who say personnel policies including diversity training and racial-justice education distract from warfighting and harm recruiting efforts.
There's also this, reported on Fox News:
The U.S. Navy has taken down posts celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride month on social media, including rainbow banners that read, "Pride."
Pride posts made on the Navy's Instagram and Twitter accounts on Thursday, June 1, are no longer there as of Friday, June 2. The posts showed outlines of Navy vessels and aircraft with streaming rainbow trails and the word "Pride" stylized in different colors. They were removed without explanation.
A meme account on Twitter called "End Wokeness" called attention to how the Navy also took down an LGBTQ+ Pride banner on its account. Some users left comments suggesting the posts were taken down in response to backlash over military support for Pride.
The tweet is here:
The @USNavy quietly removed their LGBTQ+ Pride banner pic.twitter.com/zqsFWHGBcw
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 2, 2023
There also have been problems with drag queen story hours on U.S. military bases, which the Pentagon has denied funding but been caught funding, with cancellations that followed, and drag events in U.S. military schools, which got one civilian official removed from her post for it, albeit not fired.
But these recent events have been very hard and direct changes of course for Joe Biden's Department of Defense. Posts were up, and now they're down. Events were scheduled, and now they're canceled.
That's a major change of course, because Joe Biden has been an open promoter of the idea of gay pride flags flashed from U.S. military installations and on U.S. social media:
In a tweet last July [2020], then-candidate Biden said: “Banning the Confederate flag from military installations was long overdue. Banning the LGBTQ Pride flag — the very symbol of diversity and inclusion — is undeniably wrong. The Pentagon should ensure it is authorized, or as President, I will.”
Seems it was the commander in chief who was calling for it -- and now that activity is not happening.
Why that change, of course, is happening is interesting, given the Biden team's militancy on all things wokesterly, and one can't help but think some kind of internal poll numbers are fueling this, or perhaps the unsold merchandise at Target, or Bud Light beer desperately being given away, or elections coming up in 2024. That would be if the course reversal actually came from the commander-in-chief. We can also leave open the possibility that the military simply doesn't respect its doddering and ignorant commander-in-chief and sees major problems in staying the course, but more about that later.
Probably most directly, it's money -- money talks for the Pentagon, and the guys with the power of the purse aren't particularly happy with how this explicit endorsement of the gay subculture in the military is working for U.S. military readiness.
Politico attributes the shift to pressure from the GOP House.
Rep. Matt Gaetz seems to have been very effective at putting a stop to the U.S.-funded drag shows on U.S. military bases.
According to the Independent Journal Review:
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who previously grilled Austin and Milley about drag shows on military bases tweeted, “HUGE VICTORY: The Department of Defense has CANCELED a scheduled ‘child-friendly’ drag show after I demanded answers from [Austin] and General Milley!”
Rep. Chip Roy is another powerhouse willing to use the power of the House to confront the flabby, wokesterly military so obsessed with promoting the LGBTQ agenda even as the military falls into shambles, demanding a full accounting of their taxpayer-funded activities:
According to Independent Journal Review again, Roy laid out these demands for information from the military, which has constantly been denying that it funds gay agenda activities, yet constantly getting caught doing it after their denials:
“The military’s purpose is to defend America and her interests against those around the world who want to destroy us — not to use taxpayer money to advance woke ideology,” [Roy] continued.
He laid out a request for several pieces of information such as how “each LGBTQ+ observance activity that each DoD service component (including Guard and Reserve) authorizes, approves, or encourages during the month of June 2023 advances military readiness or lethality.”
Roy also asked for copies of “any promotional materials and/or written communication distributed to service members or DoD civilians to advertise each LGBTQ+ observance activity that each DoD
service component (including Guard and Reserve) authorizes, approves, or encourages.”Finally, the letter sought “the amount of appropriated or non-appropriated funds, as well as the total number and cost of military, civilian, and contractor workhours, that each DoD service components (including Guard and Reserve) requires to plan, host, promote, or otherwise carry out each LGBTQ+ observance activity.”
Those questions are going to involve some hard answers from the Pentagon if they bother to answer them, and which they may have to answer, so they're skedaddling on making the problem less bad for themselves.
While external factors are important, whether they're Joe's re-election prospects, or Congress holding the Pentagon brass's feet to the fire, there also may be internal reasons for the shift away from wokesterliness and the LGBTQ agenda.
Number one, recruitment numbers are down, way down, with young people no longer wanting to serve in the wokester military, at least as long as pride in wokesterliness takes precedence over pride in the military itself. Nobody wants to fight and die, let alone bear the constant privations of military life for the rainbow flag. They'll do it for the American flag, but that seems to have taken second placement on the flag pole of Biden's military.
Related to that, the military has bled people. They dismissed 8,000 service members for refusing to succumb to its COVID vaccine mandate, even though significant health problems have anecdotally begun to emerge among young, fit people, which the military is full of, who take it, while the risk of dying or becoming disabled from COVID among the young is close to zero. That has to have affected military recruiting as well.
Two, the military has become a figure of fun for its openly gay orientation, given the historic undercurrents. Here are a few examples:
Lol when *hasn't* the Navy been gay? https://t.co/l9cm9lFXdp
— Kevin Lees ЁЯМН (@Suffragio) June 2, 2023
Stolen from ЁЯФТ
— Prince-philosopher Coinaday ЁЯд┤ЁЯзР (@coinaday1) June 2, 2023
> This is actually a tremendous break from the Navy's incredibly gay 248 year history. https://t.co/AldgBZqvAi
So when the Marines call the Navy gay they're just stating a fact? https://t.co/Rtol9leVVJ
— Maik (@Underdogmaik) June 3, 2023
I lived in Orlando for a year. So gay they even had a Navy base there.
— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) May 28, 2023
If they're laughing, our enemies are laughing even harder. Not a good thing in a military called to keep order in the Pacific.
Related to that, the promotion of the gay agenda has brought a lot of sneering contempt for those military people who don't support it.
Here's one Twitter denizen who claims to be a Navy veteran:
Happy Pride Month! pic.twitter.com/BO31Gavb9Z
— NavyRetGayЁЯП│я╕ПЁЯМИ (@NavyRetGay1) May 31, 2023
Here are a couple of examples of the kind of coercion that can occur to military order as the gay lifestyle is promoted as an always-positive thing for military readiness:
So who would like to share the tent with me ЁЯШИЁЯШЬ #gay #military #militarygay #navylad #gaynavy pic.twitter.com/NTDhK5u3us
— GayNavyLadd (@GayNavyLadd) May 31, 2023
George Takei believes all rape accusers unless the rapist is a Democrat.
— Paul A. Szypula ЁЯЗ║ЁЯЗ╕ (@Bubblebathgirl) May 31, 2023
BTW, didn’t Takei admit to sexually assaulting men?https://t.co/s11FSYVNtT
I recall that, in The Death Merchant, by Joseph P. Goulden, the main character, Edwin P. Wilson, described an early experience of being assaulted this way Takei described doing, while in a bunk while serving on a Navy ship.
It doesn't take a genius to know that pushing the gay agenda, or any sexual agenda in a closed-quarters space like the Navy is not conducive to good order in the military, nor does it enhance military readiness.
Drag shows and other "adult" events are things that exist, of course, and always have, and one writer for the New York Times actually tried to use that "history" to justify the Navy now promoting drag shows. But the Navy wouldn't bring in strip clubs or dock hookers used by departing sailors into Navy bases, much less pay for them, even under a phony "family friendly" claim, so why should they bring in and pay for drag shows? It makes no sense and certainly does more to drive sailors out of the Navy and other military branches than it does to foster troop morale.
It's a welcome change, of course, but since we don't completely know why it's happening, we have to keep watching them to see if they're serious.
The bottom line here is that military readiness is at stake, and now that the hour is late and China can beat us in any war at this point, it hasn't come a minute too soon.
Image: U.S. Navy, via Picryl // public domain