Federal court rules that the men-only draft registration is unconstitutional
This was a nearly-inevitable and certainly predictable result of the gender equality trend:
A federal judge has ruled that a men-only draft is unconstitutional, but he stopped short of ordering the Selective Service System to register women for military service.
The Houston judge sided with a San Diego men’s advocacy group that challenged the government’s practice of having only men sign up for the draft, citing sex discrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“This case balances on the tension between the constitutionally enshrined power of Congress to raise armies and the constitutional mandate that no person be denied the equal protection of the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gray Miller of the Southern District of Texas.
However, it is a declaratory judgment rather than an injunction, so it doesn’t require that women register for the draft. What will the effect be? Well, not all that much—yet. But there’s a commission studying the draft registration requirement and whether to continue it at all (the commission’s report is due in 2020), since one of the realities is that although there is no effective draft at the moment, it’s arguable that in the event of a large war there could be a need for an actual draft and that therefore we may need to continue to have a draft system already in place.
One possible recommendation of the commision’s report could be that draft registration should be abolished. Or instead, it could recommend that it continue and that women be registered. However, if they are, unless an actual draft occurs, such registration is mainly symbolic in terms of military service. But in the event of the institution of a meaningful draft and not just a registration, would women be forced involuntarily into combat, as men used to be? At present the military is all-volunteer, and has been for some time. But I am old enough to remember very very well a era when that was not the case.
Of course, there are also countries that draft women and have them actually serve. The IDF (Israeli military) is a well-known instance. The history of women serving there is long and involved, and more than I’m willing to tackle in this post, but here’s a summary:
Apart from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when manpower shortages saw many Palmach and IDF women taking active part in land battles, women were historically barred from battle in the IDF, serving in a variety of technical and administrative support roles. Soon after the establishment of the IDF, the removal of all women from front-line positions was decreed. Decisive for this decision was the very real possibility of falling into enemy hands as prisoners of war. It was fair and equitable to demand from women equal sacrifice and risk, it was argued, but the risk for women prisoners of rape and sexual molestation was infinitely greater than the same risk for men…
In 2000, the Equality amendment to the Military Service law stated that “The right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men.” The amendment that female lawmakers had drafted granted equal opportunities to women found physically and personally suitable for a job. The question of who and what was “suitable” was left to the discretion of military leaders on a case-by-case basis. Women did start to enter combat support and light combat roles in a few areas, including the Artillery Corps, infantry units and armored divisions…Many women would also join the Border Police.
The first female jet fighter pilot, Roni Zuckerman, received her wings in 2001. By 2006, the first female pilots and navigators graduated from the IAF training course, and several hundred women entered combat units, primarily in support roles, like intelligence gatherers, instructors, social workers, medics and engineers.
There are already women serving today in roles like that (including pilots) in the US military. But this federal court ruling concerns the draft for women, which is a different subject. The federal judge in the current US case said the need was to balance “the tension between the constitutionally enshrined power of Congress to raise armies and the constitutional mandate that no person be denied the equal protection of the law.” I would agree that there’s a need to balance some tensions, not limited to those.
The political trend for quite a while has been to increasingly deny that there are any differences between men and women. But there are. So, how to deal with them in the case of the military? Do we exempt women from serving and force men to be the ones to sacrifice their lives? Do we draft women into involuntarily serving and yet place them in safer positions than the men who are drafted, and thereby still force men to be the ones far more likely to sacrifice their lives? Do we ignore the problems that are almost certainly inherent in co-ed fighting units, and/or in women being captured by the enemy? Do we lower standards for combat eligibility in order to pay obeisance to equality? None of these solutions seems particularly good to me.
“predictable result of the gender equality trend:”
I’m puzzled. What’s a gender how do you equalize it?
Another example, in case you needed one, of the federal judiciary informing us all that we’re the pupils and they’re the school administration. And our elected officials do not a blessed thing about it.
Sign them up, all of them regardless of gender because we might have a time when we need them, all who are fit to serve. Better to have them and not need them if we need to draft once more.
Woman are filing lawsuits to be treated equally. They want to be in combat ratings. So register them and draft if a draft happens. The Navy and Air Force have woman pilots and they do the job. That is the key, can they do the job. If so, that’s great. If not, not so much. Lives could be on the line.
I remember from the Iraq war a woman helo pilot was interviewed. She was in a combat situation. She did her job with great skill. Unfortunately she was shot down and killed. The same risks as a male pilot.
The military, for time immemorial and certainly throughout our history, has been an institution apart from civil society. They are subject to a body of law, The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which is, in many cases, contrary to the Constitution. For a civilian jurist to apply civil law to the military is clearly outside his jurisdiction. I expect that he will be overturned.
Women are the means by which future generations are brought into the world. To consign them to combat is an abomination and the mark of a botched civilization.
As Heinlein long ago pointed out, any societal that does not put “women and children first!” is inherently suicidal.
Art Deco,
Only liberal/leftist federal jdges see the public as pupils with them as the school administrators and its congressional dems who protect and enable those judges.
Old Texan & Lynn H.,
The problem with registering young women for the draft is you place at potential risk those most critical to the demographic survival of the nation.
Roy L.,
Had Hillary won, the likelihood of this judge’s ruling being overturned would be much less likely. After Trump… what then?
Gerard v.
Of course, that’s WHY the Left favors it. A “botched” civilization… is their goal. How else to usher in the “New Man”?
Gives new meaning to the expression that ‘you cannot put new wine in an old container’ does it not?
I’ve been waiting 40 years for this shoe to drop..
OldTexan and Lynn: yes.
Gerard: that used to be the argument, and it is a good one. But in this era of all-abortion-all-the-time, it has no more resonance.
However, I personally am against instituting a draft for anything less than a clearly existential war, appropriately declared by Congress through a legal declaration (none of this weaseling around that we’ve been doing since WW2), and everyone* serves in the positions for which they are physically and psychologically fit — front lines or rear desks.
*Men, women, and everything in-between: see next post..
Didn’t the Marines allow women to be on the frontline a few years ago? Was it the Army? Any updates on that and if the standards were lowered? How many women passed?
I’ve talked to active Navy people who say that women onboard ships has been a disaster. Numbers of women receiving a discharge due to pregnancy are not reported. The number of female sailors who get pregnant to prevent regular 3 to 6 month deployment is not reported. Number of female Navy pilots who consistently perform poorly landing on the deck of a small aircraft carrier are not reported. Men do better at carrier flight operations since they are crazy…women can do it but they have a better understanding of life and realize that it’s one damn dangerous activity to be doing on a regular basis.
This social experiment will reduce our military effectiveness to a point where we won’t be able to recover.
Of course having women on board ship is a disaster just as it would be in a tank, foxhole or on an artillery tube. When I suggest sign them up I would anticipate they would be most useful in support roles, lots of personnel are required in logistics, intelligence, that might free up the young men who are physically fit to actually fight because I am afraid it will take longer to condition and train a lot of 18 to 24 year olds than it did 50 years ago when some of us were soldiers.
I was told in the 1960’s when I was in the Army that the reason the Israelis took the women off of front line duty was because a Muslim male when overrun would surrender to another male however he would fight to the death before he would give up to a woman. That might be true.
Whatever the results, there is no way around “the constitution is living”, as far as the judge is concerned.
Lyn Hargrave:
The facts are and the history is that physical standards for women in combat roles (infantry, armor, and artillery) have been down graded to allow women to pass. So don’t hide behind the “if they can pass the same criteria and do the job” trope. The bozo’s who have altered the requirements are doing it for social justice/gender parity reasons that have nothing to do with troops being able to complete the mission. And those same bozos keep score and will end the career of offices and NCOs who don’t toe the party line or haven’t met the quota of females in the ranks.
Huh? “Equal protection” is in the thirteenth amendment, not the fifth.
John Dough on February 25, 2019 at 7:44 pm at 7:44 pm said:
… Men do better at carrier flight operations since they are crazy…women can do it but they have a better understanding of life and realize that it’s one damn dangerous activity to be doing on a regular basis.
This social experiment will reduce our military effectiveness to a point where we won’t be able to recover.
* * *
That bolded observation is related to Gerard’s, which is that sane societies don’t put their women into combat, and most women don’t want to be there, because it interferes with their primary assignment: raising children.
Caveat: there are always people in the long tail of the “crazy” distribution, and some women have the strength & psyche to do some of the combat jobs — but om is correct that the standards are now at the level that satisfies SJW quotas, not military excellence.
Maybe President Trump has it backward (per the next post): ONLY enroll transgender M to F, who DO still have the male physique advantage (if they pass a genuine psychology test, of course).
Aesopfan,
Like many others, you have bought into the idea that there is such a thing as “transgender”. There is no there there. Except in extreme circumstances, like an invasion, females don’t belong in combat. Women and children first is the rule for valid reasons.
Please DO NOT cite Israel as an example of successful integration of women into the military.
The story here is the same as in other places – political meddling, pressure to lower standards and misreport actual performance, and reduced battle-readiness.
A report on a mixed infantry unit showed conclusively that the presence of females weakened cohesion and led to male soldiers protecting women in addition to their own duties. The report was thrown down the memory hole and a “correct” report was ordered up.
Another angle here is the use of this issue to counter the dominance of religiously traditional, politically conservative fighters in elite units. Basically, people more similar to West Bank settlers have replaced the socialist sons of the kibbutz as the ideological arrowhead of the army. The Left – having produced a generation of decadent pacifists – are desparate to preserve this power base. So they are using this issue as a wedge: close quartering of coed units is objectionable to young men from yeshiva (seminarians) and many orthodox/traditional jews.
This is glaringly obvious since the Left has constantly used the army to indocrintate conscripts and turn them against religion – and glaringly hypocritical because they have constantly stirred up political resentments towards religious jews who refused to submit and serve. Now that the religious are serving – and excelling – they start talking “diversity”. About face!
And as with other “empowerment” schemes the result is worse for many of these young women. The army is a place where rank confers lots of power over subordinates. When i first moved here the Left was hamstringing our defense by championing the many women subjected to harassment during their service… Now they’ve decided it serves their agenda to celebrate women in the army …. About face!
World War 2 recruits (all male) weighed on average about 150 pounds.
Today,from CDC:
Yes, I know, the today’s average woman is still not as strong as the average WW2 soldier, sailor, marine or aviator.
Since women can now get into combat arms in order to boost promotion chances… they can’t prevent the selective service draft from being only discriminatory against men. It was ok previously because women could not serve in combat branches. Now that women can, if men are only drafted, what is then the legal reason?
From the point of view of pure fairness, if women want full equality (whatever that means), then being subject to the draft should be a part of it. What is good for the gander is good for the goose.
From a practical perspective, so long as the military does not lower their standards to accommodate women, I don’t have any difficulties with it. In any case, the military has a LOT of non-combat jobs that need to be done. I still would not want to see women forced into combat situations against their will.
I wonder just how many young women are sitting around somewhere, dreaming about killing our enemies and blowing shit up–i.e. being in the military and on active combat duty.
My guess is–in comparison to young men–not very many.
In a country of almost 330 million probably a couple handfuls, only a few hundred, or–at most–perhaps a thousand or two.
In any case, the military has a LOT of non-combat jobs that need to be done.
Which could be done by a woman’s auxilliary, which is what we had prior to 1972. Even with gender-norming performance scores, the diversicrats in the military could hardly push the female share into double digits. A lady Marine of my acquaintance (who left the service in 1992 some years ‘ere I met her) admitted to me that without the gender-norming the female % in the military would sink like a stone. None of this is being done to fulfill the military’s institutional mission, but rather to use the military for ‘social experimentation’. Our useless Republican politicians did not end this when they had the opportunity. In fact, the decay of West Point as an institution was on their watch.
My guess is–in comparison to young men–not very many.
I think it was the writer Jessica Gavora who pointed out that there wasn’t enough content to publish more than 10 issues a year of the women’s edition of Sports Illustrated and wasn’t enough of a market to make that publication viable in a span of years when print magazines were still profitable and the regular edition published 50x a year.