[BRIEF NOTE] Denialists in denial?

[rfmcdonald]

Dana Millbank's coverage in the Washington Post of the testimony given before the United States' Congress by one Elaine Donnelly, President of the Center for Military Readiness, against the idea of keeping non-closeted non-heterosexuals out of the United States' military, seems to be fairly conventional in terms of its incredulous tone.

Holding the first hearing in 15 years on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, lawmakers invited a quartet of veterans to testify on the subject and also extended an invitation to Donnelly, who has been working for years to protect our fighting forces from the malign influence of women.

Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of "transgenders in the military." She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading "HIV positivity" through the ranks.

"We're talking about real consequences for real people," Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about "inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," the prospects of "forcible sodomy" and "exotic forms of sexual expression," and the case of "a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault" a fellow soldier.

At the witness table with Donnelly, retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, a lesbian, rolled her eyes in disbelief. Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man who was wounded in Iraq, looked as if he would explode.

Inadvertently, Donnelly achieved the opposite of her intended effect. Though there's no expectation that Congress will repeal "don't ask, don't tell" and allow gays to serve openly in the military, the display had the effect of increasing bipartisan sympathy for the cause.

[. . .]

It was tempting to think that Donnelly had been chosen by Democrats to sabotage the case against open military service for homosexuals. But Republicans had consented to the witness panel, which also included retired Army Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman, a black man who likened the current policy to racial segregation in the military, and retired Army Sgt. Maj. Brian Jones, who argued almost as passionately as Donnelly for the need to keep the military straight.

I've recently had the luck to re-read Jean-Paul Sartre's classic Anti-Semite and Jew. A passage there struck me.

What he contemplates without intermission, that for which he has an intuition and almost a taste, is Evil. He can thus glut himself to the point of obsession with the recital of obscene or criminal actions which excite and satisfy his perverse leanings; but since at the same time he attributed them to those infamous Jews on whom he heaps his scorn, he satisfies himself without being compromised. In Berlin, I knew a Protestant in whom sexual desire took the form of indignation. The sight of women in bathing suits aroused him to fury; he willingly encouraged that fury, and passed his time at swimming pools. The anti-Semite is like that, and one of the elements of his hatred is a profound sexual attraction toward Jews (46) (1995 edition)

Ah, the powers of repression.