The ACLU and four female servicemembers have sued the Department of Defense because the DoD officially excludes women from (some) combat roles.  (This is the second such suit to be filed this year, though “ACLU” may get a little more attention than “University of Virginia.”)  The justification is largely similar to that which supported the repeal of DADT and the recent legalization of marijuana in some states: People are doing it anyway, so it might as well be made official. 

In fact, the ACLU almost explicitly borrows the DADT mantra that it is actually harmful to the military not to let women in combat roles.  The justification was mirrored in a recent Stars and Stripes opinion column on “sex in the barracks” at West Point — where the author says the military should just give up and eliminate rules prohibiting sex at the Academies or in combat, since the rules get broken so frequently anyway.

In general, one expects to see “discrimination” lawsuits when a class is prevented from some benefit.  (There has yet to be a lawsuit by a woman demanding the right to register for the Selective Service, for example.)  However, participating in life-threatening combat hardly seems like a good thing.  Read carefully, though, the lawsuit seems to indicate the “benefit” sought is advancement, not combat.  The suit is essentially saying the plaintiffs want to get promoted.

There is validity to some of the facts, of course.  Women in the military in Afghanistan and Iraq have been exposed to combat by virtue of the lack of clear front lines.  When a female troop is maimed or comes home in a flag draped casket, however, the “solution” is not to force the military to require more women the opportunity to do the same.

On the other side of the argument, US News cites a RAND study for the US Marine Corps that found no direct correlation between a woman’s inability to serve in a combat role and her ability to achieve the rank of Colonel.  Others have resurrected the argument that if women want to be equal, then they should also ask to be treated equally.

In one of the few cases within the US military where that actually happened — when the Marines let women enter its Infantry Officer Course — both women washed out for physical reasons (along with quite a few men).  (In most other cases where women were “integrated,” the physical standards were set differently for women than men.)  Bring this topic up around the water cooler in a military unit, and the first thing that will get brought up are the “unequal” physical training tests given to men and women.

Of course, the discussion of women in combat has nothing to do with “equality.”  Much like the discussion of DADT, it goes beyond the ability to “shoot straight” or carry a rucked-up comrade over your shoulders.  Unfortunately, those other intangibles — and virtues — will be lost in the louder debate over whether an enemy’s bullet cares about the gender of the American body it strikes.

“War is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest of things,” to appropriate a quote.

In an interesting bit of history, the US Supreme Court upheld the “discriminatory” Selective Service in 1981 (Rostker v. Goldberg), when it said it was acceptable for the military to only require men to register — since women were excluded from combat anyway.