The Washington Times’ Rowan Scarborough has a piece today on how the repeal of DADT will affect cohesion and training in the Special Forces command, the upshot of which is that there will be no end of problems with openly gay Special Operators insisting on the need to where earrings and listen to Judy Garland CDs. What jumped out at me though was the person Scarborough chose to interview as his Special Ops inside expert: a retired Navy Seal named George R. Worthington who retired in 1992 after commanding the Navy Special Warfar Command and now writes occasional pieces for Human Events.
“If an open gay does his job, I think he’ll be accepted,” Worthington told the Times. “I don’t think there is going to be that many of them that want to sign up for SEALs anyway because of the closeness and the tightness of the training. My opinion is that they’re probably more clerical oriented. Medical profession. Corpsmen. Stuff like that.”
Worthington’s bio says he served in Vietnam in 1963, which suggests he’s at least 65 years old, probably at least a few years older. It sounds like Worthington goes into the discussion with somewhat settled views on the topic. But it does not surprise me that an admiral who retired from the Navy twenty years ago and writes for Human Events might come in with a pretty sour take on gays serving openly in the Armed Forces.
