Equality can be tough

Yahoo has an article from The Associated Press by Richard Lardner about equality:

Women would be required to register for the military draft under a House committee's bill that comes just months after the Defense Department lifted all gender-based restrictions on front-line combat units.
A divided Armed Services Committee backed the provision in a sweeping defense policy bill that the full House will consider next month, touching off a provocative debate about the role of women in the military. The panel also turned aside a measure, backed by Democrats, to punish the Citadel military college in South Carolina for flying the Confederate flag.
The United States has not had a military draft since 1973, during the Vietnam War, but all men must register with Selective Service within thirty days of turning eighteen. Military leaders maintain that the all-volunteer force is working, and the nation is not returning to the draft.
The 32-30 vote came with a twist: the proposal's author didn't back it. Representative Duncan Hunter ( photo), a former Marine who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, does not support drafting women into combat and opposes opening infantry and special operations positions to women. Hunter, a Republican from California, said he offered the measure during the committee's consideration of the policy bill to prompt a discussion about how the Pentagon's decision in December of 2015 to rescind gender restrictions on military service failed to consider whether the exclusion on drafting women also should be lifted.
That's a call for Congress, not the executive branch, Hunter said. "I think we should make this decision," he said. "It's the families that we represent who are affected by this."
At times, Hunter evoked graphic images of combat in an apparent attempt to convince colleagues that drafting women would lead to them being sent directly into harm's way.
"A draft is there to put bodies on the front lines to take the hill," Hunter said. "The draft is there to get more people to rip the enemies' throats out and kill them."
But if Hunter was trying to sway people against his amendment, his plan did not work.
Representative Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, said she supported Hunter's measure. "I actually think, if we want equality in this country, if we want women to be treated precisely like men are treated and that they should not be discriminated against, we should be willing to support universal conscription," she said.
Representative Martha McSally, a Republican from Arizona and a retired Air Force fighter pilot, said draftees are not exclusively sent to the front lines. There are plenty of other useful, noncombat positions for them to fill, she said.
Reporters pressed White House spokesman Josh Earnest on whether President Barack Obama would hesitate to sign legislation expanding the draft because it would mean his daughters would be required to register. Earnest declined to comment, citing lawsuits that have been filed against the Selective Service System over the exclusion.
If an eighteen-year-old man does not register with the Selective Service, he could lose his eligibility for student financial aid, job training, and government jobs. Immigrant men could lose their eligibility for citizenship. According to the latest annual report, nearly eighty percent of eighteen-year-olds registered on time during the 2015 fiscal year ending on 30 September 2015, and the registration rate for all men aged 20 to 25 was nearly a hundred percent.
Hunter's amendment was part of a defense policy bill that authorizes defense spending for the budget year that begins 1 October 2016. The committee passed the legislation by a 60-2 vote.
The overall bill cuts eighteen billion dollars from the wartime operations account to pay for weapons and troops the Pentagon didn't request, a money-shifting strategy Defense Secretary Ash Carter condemned on Wednesday as a "road to nowhere" that undermines American troops and emboldens America's enemies.
Representative Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas, the committee's chairman, defended the plan, and said the billions of dollars shifted out of the wartime fund would be restored in a supplemental budget submitted to Congress early next year by Obama's successor. He's argued the committee's approach is essential to halting an erosion of combat readiness that has grown worse on Obama's watch.
On another thorny policy issue, Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the committee's senior Democrat, offered an amendment that would have barred the Defense Department from financially supporting the ROTC program at any institution that flies the Confederate battle flag. The Citadel is the only school that fits the profile. The college is in South Carolina Representative John Clyburn's district. He's not on the committee, but he backed Smith's measure in a statement, calling the Confederate flag a symbol of hate, racial oppression, and resistance to the rule of law.
Republicans said the college's Board of Visitors has voted to remove the flag, but South Carolina state law prohibits the Citadel from doing so. "This failure to take down the Confederate battle flag is an extremely disappointing statement of principles," Smith said. "They should have voted to take it down instead of dodging the issue."

Rico says that, if you want to be equal, you gotta take it all... (And if you want money, you'll take down that stupid flag and admit the Civil War is long over.)