The US Marine Corps — which was the only Service to significantly push back on gender integration last year — announced that it would make no special accommodations for mixed gender units in deployed environments.

That includes training for deployed environments.

Marines in the field stay in everything from a large, single room shelter filled with dozens of cots to sleeping under tarps or nothing at all, said Maj. Charles Anklam III, executive officer for 1st Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina — the first gender-integrated Marine infantry battalion…

Anklam said female Marines deployed to conflict zones have shared tents with their male counterparts at times. But this marks the first time female Marines will be doing so during their regular training with their combat unit.

In 2013 then-Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen Mark Welsh noted the “hookup mentality” of society contributed to the culture of sexuality in the military. He was criticized for his frankness, which was ultimately a statement of the obvious.

Speaking on the same topic of military sexual assaults that same day, future-President Donald Trump criticized the “geniuses” who decided to put men and women together and didn’t think things would happen:

Now, of course, President Trump is the Commander in Chief — with the authority to affect those policies.

Unfortunately, the controversy over mixed-gender military duties — which goes far beyond “just having to work with” someone of the opposite gender — has a long history.  In just one example, in 1999 a married US Air Force missileer asked that he be religiously accommodated by not being required to sit alert with a female crewmember, as the duty would require him to live in the cramped quarters of an underground missile control center for days at a time — alone with only the company of the female officer.  Several commanders accommodated him — until a new commander decided to no longer approve the accommodation.  The new commander essentially accused him of trying to shirk his duties and gave him a poor officer evaluation, essentially ending his career.  After the officer filed a lawsuit with the assistance of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Air Force withdrew the derogatory evaluation.

Why require a man and woman to be alone together in that kind of situation?  What crisis requires such a course of action — a course of action that potentially has second and third order effects not demanded by the peacetime environment?  Does anyone really believe the United States is in a state of total war that requires the forced gender-integration of all career fields regardless of the impact to troops or the mission?

Those who would dismiss the concerns with a hand-wave of “we’re all adults” have clearly not been in a deployed military environment with mixed genders.

To be clear, no one is saying these policies excuse misconduct.  But some policies certainly create opportunities for conflict and misconduct where it was impossible before.

It’s not that common sense isn’t so common anymore, though that’s certainly what it looks like.

Rather, it would seem that even some of those who have common sense have abandoned it, apparently believing it is more important to protect the right of someone to smoke a lit cigarette while pumping gas than it is to enforce an “old-fashioned” rule for safety’s sake.

Will it absolutely cause an explosion? Of course not. But will the policies allow the opportunity for an explosion when it would have been impossible before?

Absolutely.

That’s just common sense.

So what do you call it when a person — or an institution — ignores common sense and accepts unnecessary risk for the purpose of furthering an agenda?

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