Obama is hoping to capitalize on our ignorance of the men and women in uniform who defend this country and of the phenomenon known as forced intimacy

It is a sad, and potentially fatal, fact that most Americans know virtually nothing about the United States military

writes Frank Gaffney, Jr.

That astounding reality is all the more incredible given that our very survival ultimately depends on the men and women in uniform who defend this country.

Such ignorance is, ironically, a testament to the success of what is known as the All Volunteer Force. It is also a national defect, one that may soon be the undoing of a system based on the willingness of a few to protect the rest of us at great risk to themselves.

…President Obama is hoping to capitalize on our ignorance of these folks and the reality of their lives in uniform — notably, the phenomenon known as "forced intimacy" that is inherent in communal bunkrooms, showers, latrines, shipboard sleeping compartments and foxholes. He is insisting that the United States Senate accede during the post-Thanksgiving lame-duck session to his demand for the repeal of a 1993 law prohibiting homosexuals from serving in the armed forces.

In 2010 civilian America, the idea of self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals being entitled to equal job opportunities and social treatment has become widely accepted. Polls are endlessly cited that suggest most civilians are sympathetic when LGBT activists demand that the military must conform to this practice.

Suddenly, however, just as the Obama-led campaign to foist the radical homosexual agenda on the U.S. armed forces is reaching its denouement, the American people are getting a taste of forced intimacy — and they don't like it. In airports around the country, they are being subjected to intrusions on their personal space by people and machines of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Being forced to submit to a privacy-rending body scan or pat-down — unpleasant as it may be — is not likely to compare to the trauma that can flow from being forced to submit to showering or sharing a bunkroom with someone who finds you sexually attractive. Still, as the traveling public is now beginning to understand, "virtual strip-searches" and officially sanctioned groping is offensive. So is the TSA response that those who don't want to "submit" to it can always elect not to fly.

The question occurs: How many of our servicemen and women will decide they also don't want to submit to a "zero-tolerance" enforcement of the new homosexual- friendly regulations that will be promulgated if the present statute proscribing LGBT service is repealed?

…Every American who finds themselves bridling at the invasion of their privacy by TSA should think long and hard about forcing our all-too-often unsung and unrecognized heroes to submit to far worse. And their elected representatives, who often know little more than their constituents about our military, should refrain from imposing such hardships on those who keep us safe and free — especially in a lame-duck session that leaves no opportunity for deliberation and debate about the predictable, real and toxic repercussions of such actions.

I am reminded of the episode recounted by James Mitchener in his autobiography (for the record, Mitchener was a gay-rights friendly progressive and, obviously, the episode is a — highly — unusual one), in which a Marine captain's authority over his detachment on a tiny Pacific island (Matareva) during World War II is slowly but surely entirely undermined by a "confirmed homosexual", a "vicious" staff sargeant who, it is true, had a particularly "malignant power" and who "began a systematic campaign to entice the younger marines into his net", persuading "one after another of these young men to engage in sexual acts with him" and turning the base into "a homosexual riot".