Andrew – I must say I can’t agree with you on this one. I’d argue that adultery is more poisonous than homosexuality in the military. You concede that you see the logic of outlawing it within a unit, but then you seem to become hyper-rationalist when it becomes more abstract. Obviously, I have no first hand experience, but it seems to me that demoralization doesn’t cease to be an issue the moment it’s clear your fellow soldier isn’t sleeping with your wife, just the other guy’s. I can imagine that the very suggestion that soldiers are going around sleeping with other men’s wives is paranoia-inducing for troops far away from home and prone to letting their imaginations run wild.

Moreover, I am deeply skeptical that we can, from the outside, pronounce too easily on how soldiers are to define their own code of honor. What may seem like a gratuitous old chestnut from our vantage point may indeed be central to an internally consistent code of conduct. I’m not saying that the civilian political leadership or civilian society generally should never meddle in military affairs. Forced desegregation of the troops, it seems to me, was morally required. But I think we should do so carefully and with a keen attention to the dangers of unintended consequences.

Indeed, I think cosmopolitan libertarians like yourself suffer a version of their own fatal conceit, as it were. They see no harm in their laissez-fair values for themselves and their friends and so they see no harm in imposing such values on institutions whose mission depends on entirely different moral codes and rules. In short, it seems an odd cause to champion: the need to “liberate” our troops so they can be free to boink other men’s wives and other women’s husbands.