Military should take adultery hotline off the hook

And to think that my generation once wanted our ilitary leaders to make
love, not war. Be careful what you wish for. Nearly three decades later all
hell has broken loose, if hell is the right word to use for the serial
scandal of sex, sin and soldiers.
Where are we now?
Lt. Kelly Flinn, the first woman B52 pilot, has been banned forever
from the cockpit. Lying about her lover made her morally unfit to drop
nuclear bombs on our enemies.
Maj. Gen. John E. Longhouser has resigned from his top post at
Aberdeen Proving Ground. A man with a Purple Heart was toppled by an
affair of the heart.
Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston is now out of the running for head
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's disqualified from making military policy
because of making civilian whoopee.
And this list doesn't even include the commander in chief.
The gods must be laughing. Venus and Mars that is, though you may
not be able to tell them apart anymore in this crossdressing event of
love and war.
A saga that began in Aberdeen as a serious scandal about rape, sexual
harassment and abuse of power has degenerated into a scandal sheet to be
filled with the names of anyone in the military who's had consensual sex
outside of marriage.
But as the adultery hot line rings, as the witch and warlock hunt
goes on, there is also a growing sense that something has gotten out of
hand. Disqualified by a decadeago affair? Run out by a relationship
that a wife pardoned?
The new military theme song is no longer "From the Halls of
Montezuma" but "When the Saints Come Marching In."
Indeed if there's any good news, it's this growing squeamishness
about the random bloodpinning of 'As." It signals the breakup of an
unholy alliance of the religious right and the secular left over
investigating the personal lives of public people.
Remember back in 1987 when Gary Hart walked the political plank
of the good ship "Monkey Business"? Some strange political bedfellows
puritans and feminists joined in applause. Some blamed Hart for
breaking his vows to God while others blamed him for the look in his
wife's eyes.
There was always less agreement than there seemed to be between these
sides of a great cultural divide. Under the surface, they hold different
moral attitudes about sex.
One is as straightforward as 10 Commandments. The other as complex as
human relationships. One holds a single, sinful judgment about adultery
that is the same for all people and circumstances. The other weighs and
balances, disapproves and yet believes that "it depends."
Bill Clinton has divided and reunited this coalition time and again
in the Ms. Jones debacle. But now the military's random attack on
adultery has made the seams split. In the issue of consensual sex, a
touchy, uncertain, fluid majority is once again leaning toward the side
that says: "It depends."
In civil and civilian America, the majority disapproves of
adultery, but knows that it happens, even to those who disapprove. It
recognizes the treachery but listens to the individual circumstances. It
acknowledges the destructive power of infidelity but may understand.
Most Americans make the sort of layered, individual distinctions
that the military finds so hard in just these kinds of cases. In private
or public life, we parse out understanding to a young woman conned into a
relationship. We hold a different moral standard for a husband separated
from his marriage. We are less judgmental of someone forgiven by his wife.
Americans coexist with adultery sometimes because the adulterers may be
our next brotherinlaw; our best friend, our coworker, us. Sometimes it's
because they are the best for the job. Sometimes it's because we value
privacy as much as purity.
Now the Pentagon has moved onto this touchy territory with all the
delicacy of a tank battalion. They claim that the military only pursues
adultery charges when it impacts "good order and discipline," but can't
define how or when that happens. Secretary of Defense William Cohen says
"the rule of reason has to apply" but then gives in to the rule of politics.
Surely, the military has quite enough to do monitoring sexual abuses,
harassment and coercion, not to mention the dicier terrain of cowarriors
and lovers, without chasing down every out affair.
What an odd state of, um, affairs for a peacetime army. I keep
wondering what on Earth would have happened back in the old "make love.
not war" days if young Americans had oniy known that infidelity was a way
to get out of the Army.

Goodman is a columnist for the Boston Globe