The exception, not the rule

James Dao has an article in The New York Times about a Marine who doesn't much care:

Private First Class Daniel Carias, a Bronx native who is just weeks from graduating from Marine Corps infantry training at Camp Geiger in North Carolina, says he has known plenty of gay men since high school and feels completely comfortable around them. He thinks Congress did the right thing in repealing the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, a policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But Private Carias, 18, has one major concern: gay men, he says, should not be allowed to serve in front-line combat units. “They won’t hold up well in combat,” he said. That view, or variations on it, was expressed repeatedly in interviews with Marines around this town, home to Camp Lejeune, and outside Camp Pendleton in Southern California.
Most of the approximately two dozen Marines interviewed said they personally did not object to gay men or lesbians serving openly in the military. But many said that introducing the possibility of sexual tension into combat forces would be disruptive, an argument made by the commandant of the Marine Corps a week before the historic repeal was passed by the Senate on Saturday and sent to President Obama for his signature.
Many concerns —and possible solutions— are outlined in a Defense Department plan for carrying out the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Officials said they did not yet have a timetable for adopting the change. Under the terms of the legislation, the Defense Department will not carry out the repeal until Mr. Obama, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, certify that the military is ready to make the change.
In the interviews, the Marines also argued that front-line units living in cramped outposts were encouraged to be extremely tight knit to better protect one another. An openly gay man —only men can serve in combat units— might feel out of place and as a result disrupt that cohesion, they argued.
“Coming from a combat unit, I know that in Afghanistan we were packed in a sardine can,” said Corporal Trevor Colbath, 22, a Pendleton-based Marine who returned from Afghanistan in August. “There’s no doubt in my mind that openly gay Marines can serve, it’s just different in a combat unit. Maybe they should just take the same route they take with females and stick them in noncombat units.”
Advocates for gay service members said questions about the ability of gay troops to serve in combat units were based on unfair and inaccurate stereotypes. Gay men already serve honorably and well in war-fighting units, they said, just not openly. Those same gay troops typically blend in to their units without tensions, they said, and anyone, straight or gay, can crumble emotionally during fighting.
“The thought they would freak out, be unprepared, or panic is completely belied by the facts that have come out during this debate,” said Alexander Nicholson, a former soldier who is executive director of Servicemembers United, an organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans.
Anthony Wilfert, 25, for instance, served a year-long tour with an Army combat unit in Baghdad from 2005 to 2006. He was in firefights and knew colleagues who were wounded or killed. Several colleagues, including superiors, knew he was gay, he asserts. But no one had trouble with his sexuality in Iraq, he says, and he was promoted to sergeant. “No one feared that I would not be able to handle myself or be able to help other men and women on the battlefront,” said Mr. Wilfert, who lives in Nashville. Eventually, though, he was discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell”. He said he was considering re-enlisting.
The concerns raised by Marines about gay men in combat units echoed the results of a survey of 115,000 troops released by the Pentagon in November. The survey found that across the entire military, just thirty percent of service members said that ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” would undermine their unit’s ability to “work together to get the job done”. But, among infantry troops, the percentage was significantly higher: 48 percent within Army combat units and 58 percent among Marine combat units said that having openly gay troops would hurt unit cohesiveness.
Concerns about the ability of combat units to integrate openly gay troops has also been raised repeatedly by the commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Amos, who told reporters recently that having gay Marines in combat units would be a “distraction. Mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines’ lives,” General Amos said. However, the general, whose comments came several days before Congress voted to repeal the policy, said in a statement on Sunday that the Marine Corps would “step out smartly to faithfully implement this new policy”.
Not all the Marines interviewed expressed concerns about having openly gay troops fighting alongside them. Private First Class Alex Tuck, a nineteen-year-old from Birmingham, Alabama who is at Camp Geiger, said he had no doubt that gay Marines would not only perform well in combat, but would also be accepted by a vast majority of Marines. “Showers will be awkward,” Private Tuck said outside a shopping mall here, expressing a worry mentioned by just about every Marine interviewed. “But as long as a guy can hold his own and protect my back, it won’t matter if he is gay.”
But a friend of Private Tuck’s injected a note of skepticism. “It won’t be totally accepted,” said Private Justin Rea, eighteen, from Warren, Michigan. “Being gay means you are kind of girly. The Marines are, you know, macho.”
Several combat commanders, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to speak publicly on the issue, expressed concerns. An Army platoon sergeant who recently led front-line soldiers in Afghanistan, and who supported the ban’s repeal, said he envisioned a difficult transition period during which harassment of openly gay troops would be common. “They were kicking people out for being homosexual, and now they will be kicking people out for picking on homosexuals,” the sergeant said.
An Army officer who is now leading troops in Afghanistan said he expected that swift and stern disciplinary measures would stamp out harassment. But he said he still anticipated that many openly gay soldiers would feel alienated at first from their straight colleagues. “They will not be going to all of the events, strip clubs, and bars that the other soldiers attend, and soldiers will almost certainly not be going out of their way to sample the gay culture,” the officer said in an email. “The first gay men (as the infantry is all male) are going to need very thick skins.”
A third officer, just back from Afghanistan, said he would not be surprised if some combat soldiers in small outposts wanted to sleep separately from openly gay troops. But this officer emphasized that what would truly earn acceptance for gay troops would be fighting well. “Honestly, what I care about is how good a gunner they are,” he said. “If an individual is performing well on the battlefield, people won’t care.”

Rico says that openly gay men (as openly gay women will get hit on by straight men regardless) will be lucky if all they get from the other troops is being picked on; this is an organization comprised of a lot of angry young men, hopped up on testosterone, with access to a lot of weapons...