European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 10, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Wednesday february 10, 1993 commentary the stars and stripes Page 15 Clinton s Gay policy proves he s a brass hat Back in the old army exigencies of the service were routinely cited in official military orders As the Catchall reason for whatever the brass wanted  was the perfect bureaucratic word with just the right tone of officious obscurity guaranteed to Awe the troops into  a situation calling for immediate action that word describes perfectly president Clinton s Rushto lift the ban on homosexuals in the military.  time the troops were not awed. They were appalled. With the ongoing military crises in Iraq Bosnia and Somalia How could their commander in chief take this divisive and peripheral Issue As his first priority what made it a situation Call ing for immediate action Given the size of his Cam Kain contributions from the homosexual Community someday his action was just evidence that he was in will Rogers words Harry g. Summers an honest politician. When he s bought he stays  but others see it As evidence that he is truly a brass hat a pejorative term for elitist leaders who Are totally out of touch with the rank and file. The Only commander in chief in history who is on the Public record As loathing those he now commands there is no doubt that Clinton and his staff and most broadcasters and editorial writers As Well for that mat Ter know More homosexuals than they  soldiers. As the renowned military sociologist Charles Moskos him self a draftee recently noted in the Washington Post it is a sign of How Distant most of the citizenry has be come from military  last week for example Abc s today show Fea tured four homosexual men who had served honorable in the military in past wars. But the show was disingenuous. None had served As openly avowed homosexuals. Indeed All had served successfully because they had kept their private sexual preferences private. Then and now that s been True of almost All homosexuals in the military. -. But that s hypocrisy say the critics. Of course it is. Hypocrisy is not Only the grease that makes social inter course possible noted social critic Herman Kahn it is also the Price that vice pays to  but say the politically Correct sexual preference is no vice. That s not what the Law  sodomy As practice by a Man with a boy is a sexual preference and the Law certainly condemns that As a  having intimate relations with a Corpse is a sexual preference too but that s against the Law As Well. Bestiality is also a sexual preference but animal rights activists would be up in arms Over allowing goats recruiting to be tethered in the Barracks. Sodomy is not Only condemned by the Bible it i condemned by Law in most states As Well including Bill Clinton s Arkansas. Many americans see it As a vice Aswell. In eight Days the Capitol switchboard logged 1,650,143 phone Calls. White House Shinmei Stegeorge Steph Nopoulos contemptuously tried to por tray the Calls opposing lifting the ban As being orchestrated by the religious right. An obliging Washington Post Toady since singly described them As the poor uneducated and easy to  but it s not just the religious right that oppose lifting the ban. So  most americans who unlike Clin ton and company have served in the military including the american legion and the veterans of foreign wars. When it comes to tinkering with the american military Clinton ignores Public opinion at his peril for the . Military is genuinely a people s  Constitution gives command of the military to the president but gave the Congress the representatives of the people periodically elected control Over its very existence. The military is a creature of the con Gress which has sole Power to make rules for its government and regulation. It was under that authority that Congress by Law specifically proscribed sodomy As a criminal offence. And therein lies the critical difference Between the integration of Black americans and women into the military and the lifting of the ban on  did not make skin color a criminal offence. Congress did not make gender a criminal offence. But sodomy is a criminal offence and sodomy is homosexuality s defining act. To divorce the two As Clinton say she will  by lifting the ban on sexual preference but continuing the proscription on sexual conduct is arrant nonsense. This is not a civil rights Issue. It is a social Engi Neering Issue. What homosexuals arc trying to  is use the military As a vehicle to legitimize homosexuality Asan alternative lifestyle. And if they have to jeopardize the common defense in order to  so then so be it. Ashe phones ring off the Hook it remains to be seen if the Public agrees with those Xic Nyics. C the los Angoli to legalized gambling comes up a loser for . A i la if life is As a poet said a sum of habits disturbed by a few thoughts we should think clearly about those habits we deliberately develop. Consider the rapid spread of Legal gambling.untill989, just two states Nevada and new Jersey had Casino gambling. The such gambling returned to Deadwood s d., where in 1876 wild Bill Hickok Wai shot in the Back while holding a poker hand. Since then 11 More states have legalized some casinos. Staid Minnesota today has More than new Jersey. Lotteries helped to finance Jamestown the Continental army Dartmouth Harr Vard Princeton and Many Public  32 states and the District of co Lumbia have government run lotteries which in 1991 siphoned up $17 billion. Forty seven states participate in some form of gambling. Fifty two Indian tribes in 17 states so far exploiting a supreme court ruling that states  not have regulatory Powers Over tribes Are operating casinos and Bingo operations Grassing $6 billion annually. Mates May not tax Indian casinos but can profit from them. For example a Connecticut tribe whose Casino a three hour drive from new York City soon will employ 10,000 has struck a bargain with their state the tribe will give a projected $100 million annually to Connecticut As Long As not even a single Slot machine is legalized off the reservation. Around the nation some cities Are contemplating ceding parcels of land to indians As reservations where gambling would be Legal and the cities would get a  Tunica county miss., America s fourth. Poorest county in the 1990 census unemployment has been halved largely because Ofa Nve boat Casino. Four other states also have River boat casinos it May net the coun George f. To $2. Million an will dually a sum him. About the size of the county s cur rent budget. Five states operate Keno and two others Are flirting with it. Maryland Hopes to raise $100 mini Ion this year from Ken gambling. Maryland Keno is a High Speed video lottery offering bets every five min utes on monitors in 1,800 bars and other places. Supporters of this say to critics i you object to this Windfall from the be Havior of consenting adults what taxes  you propose to use to compel a similar sum from reluctant citizens in 1991, Gross revenues from Legal gambling nationwide were $26.7 billion More than five times the Box office of the Domestic movie Industry. States received Only 2.4 percent of their revenues from lotteries but this sum was not trivial. Are there social costs from All this lots beginning with the ruinous to health work and families excesses of compulsive gamblers. These Are people susceptible perhaps for psychological or even physiological reasons to what the american psychiatric association Calls a disorder of impulse  now classifying such destructive be Havior As a disease can be a tactic for attaining Access to government and insurance Money and can further attenuate the notion of individual responsibility. And calling a behaviour addictive i problematic. But research suggests that some compulsive gamblers Are peculiarly prone to a High like a drug users from abnormally elevated Levels of endorphins in the blood when they Are excited by gambling. Furthermore state sponsored advertised and hyped lotteries Are exploitive. Per capita sales of loiter tickets Are higher in poor inner City neighbor hoods than in suburbs and the disparity is even larger when lottery spending indoor and affluent neighbourhoods is com pared As a percentage of household in  Berbrich writing in notre Dame Magazine recalls with appropriate disgust an Illinois lottery billboard in a Chicago ghetto this could be you ticket  thus does government Ped dle a spurious but tantalizing Hope to people particularly vulnerable to delusive promises and ill equipped to decipher the discouraging probabilities. Gambling can be a benign entertainment but it can become for individuals and perhaps for a society a Way of at tempting to evade the Stern fact that As Henry James said life is Effah unremittingly  gambling inflames the lust for wealth without work weak ening a perishable american belief that the moral Worth of a person i gauged not by How much Money he makes but by How he makes his Money. Joseph Epstein the essayist notes that to have come to America in the firs place was to take a serious Gamble. To Advance with the country s Frontier was another  nowadays when life for most americans is without routine risk gambling May be a Way of infusing life with stimulating uncertainty. But by now with a deepening dependency of individuals and governments on gambling we Are gambling with our National Char Acter forgetting that character is destiny. C the Washington port