What burns me is that males must register, or else. Not to mention all the programs, etc they will not be able to get, etc.

Females just get it for nothing. Like so many other things.

Females are, as of the last Census, 50.9% yet are still called a minority.

Comes down to the simple fact that males will always do whatever to please a female. How did all these laws get passed to begin with?

Females, for whatever reason, haven’t figured this out.

Selective Service is nothing more than another link in the system to give everything to a female, as long as a male does the work.

I cannot believe we as humans have advanced so much in the past century, yet we’re still so primitive as to engage in widespread destruction and murder. I am ashamed to call myself a human. However, I can see from many of your thoughts and feelings, there are many of us who share the same general concept. Peace is the answer. I don’t care if others view me as weak for wanting to be left alone and wanting others to be left alone. To the war mongers, I say you are primates. Go evolve. Draft and the selective service is _WRONG_.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my homeland. I like the ability to go eat a quad cheeseburger at Burger King once awhile or use my broadband Internet connectivity to my heart’s desire. But, I would not die for this. I will not invade someone else’s homeland and kill their countrymen. Self preservation is one of the most basic of instincts. I would much rather live in the woods without all the luxuries of modern life than to be dead due to someone else’s control over me.

One last personal thought. If my local area was ever affected by invaders who were killing my neighbours, family and friends; In that case I would kill. Because at this point, it has come down to the wire.

This is a very interesting conversation. Keep brainstorming, fellow freethinkers! =)

God bless,
malign

1) Ovaries: Gotta have em to replace, maintain, or build-up the war machine effort.

2) Costs: VA Hospitals lack beds for females. Would cost quite a bit to have beds available. Worked at the VA, know this from 1st hand experience. Carry that over into a military base operations, etc., and you realize that there would be some major money incentives to keep the status quo.

3) Politics: What would happen to the dynamics of politics if a 18-26 year old women thought for a moment, they might be drafted. Women are the majority aren’t they? Might change a lot of women’s point of view.

4) Wages in Military: How would that impact the private sector? Granted, military families lose substantial assets while serving, but returning into the private sector could realize gains for women.

I have 2 daughters and 1 son. I don’t love my son less. Makes you wonder why this isn’t being promoted more in alternative medias and organizations. Where is NOW, or MoveOn.org on this issue? I don’t blame men for being angry at women over this. At the same time, I don’t understand why women aren’t more angry at this system of discrimination.

Good luck to the cause! There are a few good women behind this!

To secure the continuing existence of the United States democracy against intractable religious fanaticism, whose goal is nothing less than a Muslim theocracy for all of Planet Earth, it is inevitable that general military conscription will again be implemented following the 2004 Presidential Election, despite political protestation to the contrary. Indeed, a ‘backdoor’ draft, imposed by the Bush administration, has existed in our military for more than a two years, whereby current personnel are forced to serve past their retirement or end-of-enlistment dates.

With very rare exceptions, every male residing in the United States 18 to 26 years of age is required by the Military Selective Service Act to register with the Selective Service System, and thereby subject himself to the possibility of involuntary military service. Yet, with the ongoing War on Islamic Terrorism, the prosecution of which has required the deployment of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel, and stretched the National Guard and Reserve to its limit, absolutely no female in the U.S. is required to register. This clear fact of gender discrimination has not been focused upon in public discussions because an active draft has not been in effect since 1973.

The United States Selective Service System offers on its Website a short history of the draft with respect to women. The primary reason given for non-registration of women is a Supreme Court decision, Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981). Simply stated, it says that since all men registered with the Selective Service are considered combat replacements, and since Congress forbids women to go into combat, women should not be registered. Of course, this reasoning is absurd, since it presupposes that absolutely every male called for involuntary military service will be used exclusively for combat, and conversely that absolutely no male called will be used for the approximately 90% of military jobs which are non-combat related.

Two identical pieces of legislation before the U.S. Congress, H.R.163 and S.89, referred to as Universal National Service Act of 2003, amend the Military Selective Service Act to authorize the registration of females. Unless exempted, they obligate the performance of a two-year period of national service either in the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that “promotes the national defense,” for all United States residents, male and female, between 18 and 26 years of age. Further perusal of this proposal reveals Section 5(d), which authorizes the President “to apply different classification standards for fitness for military service and fitness for civilian service.” This Section clearly permits the President to perpetuate the current double standard and pander to the female voting majority. Because of a Congressional rule exempting females, only males will be placed involuntarily into direct ground combat. Females, although subject to national service, will be spared the dirt and danger that is inherent in facing our country’s enemies. Section 5(d) guarantees that virtually all females will return whole and well to enjoy equal civil rights and equal veteran benefits, while those of their male peers who do return will have had a vastly different experience discharging their ’male-only’ civil responsibilities.

Some questions arise as a result of these blatant facts of continuing gender discrimination:

1. Do equal civil rights for females obligate females to equal civil responsibilities? Should the absence of female civil responsibilities vis-à-vis military service commensurately diminish female civil rights? In light of the fact that only males are required by Federal Law to serve involuntarily in direct ground combat for up to six years of their lives, and to risk their very existence in that service, to what quantum degree should females’ civil rights be diminished? Why is the pretext of a logically flawed Supreme Court decision, and continuing legislative gender discrimination, allowed to exempt the female majority of the population from any possibility of involuntary direct ground combat? .

2. Should female members of the Legislative and Executive branches of government be permitted to vote for war or military conflict, i.e. to place only males into involuntary direct ground combat, while they and their daughters enjoy gender exemption from such civil responsibility?

3. Title IX demands that proportionately gender-equal funding be used for all school-based activities, including athletics, in schools that receive any federal funding. Many schools have had to abandon male team sports that earn revenue in excess of their costs and which aid in the preparation of males for the teamwork and organization of military service that only males must (under Federal Law) perform, in order to provide gender-equal funding for female sports which perennially lose revenue. Yet there is no imperative for females to utilize the skills and strengths learned on the athletic field and in the classroom for the military defense of their country. Should Title IX continue?

4. Arguments, based on strength and speed, against placing females involuntarily into direct ground combat, are here repudiated: Gender-norming has been extensively used to affirmatively place females ahead of males into civilian positions requiring physical strength and speed, such as firefighters, police, smoke jumpers, and cadets in service academies. Historically, males, and only males, have borne the civil responsibility of involuntary direct ground combat. Why not use these same gender-normed standards to affirmatively place females ahead of males into involuntary direct ground combat? Females cannot be simultaneously too weak and slow to perform as equals to males on the battlefield, and still be affirmatively placed ahead of males into civilian occupations that require similar strength and speed.

David W. Behrens
10 High Point Terrace
Sussex, NJ 07461
973-875-9793
dave_behrens@juno.com

Give me a break! They are not worth defending and neither is the system.

Women get dragged into the mix in this discussion because the Selective Service exists in the context of our society’s values. In that context, men are disposable and not as free as women, though feminists tend to only see women as victims of discrimination.

When individual rights are the cornerstone of our society, both men and women will be free. And neither could be forced into military service.

The fact is, men are more fit to handle the rigors of ground troop front line combat. Sexual equality takes a back seat to that. The function of any men that are drafted would be to kill, and to keep on killing until the war is over. Men do this more effectively in the type of war that would put a draft in motion.

Refrain from emotionalism and knee jerk statements of “outrage” over this issue. The wheels of democracy move slowly. As more and more positions in this high tech military open up the issue of including women in a possible draft will be revisited by the legislature as it has every few years.

The idea that men are naturally “more fit to handle the rigors of comabat” is completly false. My sister runs three miles each morning and could survive better in combat than me. How many strong, athletic women will sit at home at watch me die on tv if I’m drafted?