Gay service(wo)men in the US army

An exchange that took place on the Marxmail list :

I cant' believe that you guys are still fooling around with whether gay
people should be allowed to serve in the US Army.
The answer is of course YES.
Gay soldiers should be allowed to get hit by Kalashinkov (or M-16) fire.
What makes them cleverer than heterosexuals, Blacks, women, Irish,
Indians, Asians, and any other recognized group that has enlisted ?
Homosexuals are just as capable of slaughter when commanded to do so.

Mark Lause wrote :

"participation in the military, among other reasons,is often the best chance
the poor have of getting anywhere different in this society. It's the key to
an education, to a decent job, to the kind of future that some may well be taking
for granted."

No, I beg to disagree. Willingly choosing to kill people when ordered to do so by
the state can never be excused, even though it brings short-term money in.
And all those soldiers will NOT get a "decent job and diplomas" when they come back. That is a lie.
They will not get the equivalent of the GI Bill of 1945 enabling them to go to college for free. That is a lie.
They will return with nothing to show for killing 60,000 to 120,000 civilians in Irak (give or take).

Whether an external threat or an internal threat, the Army will always
do its duty as loyal servant to those who yield power (privileges).

It is the basic hierarchical structure of the armed forces we object to.
I mean we, Libertarian Marxists, not we, "anything goes" Marxists.

The Army is a harmful institution that is purposefully disjointed from
the people, and purposefully entrusted with powerful weapons to subdue
the people.

Mid-term elections in the US

Who will win the next elections is synonymous with who will betray the working class's hopes and aspirations ?

The answer is : those who seek power above and over the working class.

To encourage the working class to vote for them is to participate in reinforcing the apathy of the working class by telling workers that they count for nothing and that their role is simply to "vote right" (no pun intended).

Working class consciousness is always battered and ridiculed, as the question arises for whom to vote ?
For him ! For her ! For them ! Vote against conservatism !
The social relationships that characterize the commodity mode of production breed passivity and resignation.
The day workers renounce representative democracy will be the day they take charge of running their own lives.
Control over one's life and working conditions is much more than casting a vote in favour of one group of people intent on harvesting surplus value.
It can only be achieved through One Big Union, and I may add, a union based on self-management and which eschews "representative democracy".