SATIRE
So Kim Davis is back at the Supreme Court, begging — yet again — to be allowed, as a government official, to practice a particular brand of bigotry "required" by her religious beliefs.1 Davis and her fear of somehow "blessing" same-sex relationships actually casts a rather disturbing (perhaps kaleidoscopic) light on matters at the Department of Defense/War/ExcessiveViolence.2
The Secretary of D/W/EV has a serious problem with same-sex relationships. This is at least a partial explanation for his firing of female officers in command positions, because — especially in the Navy — those officers are/have been engaging in same-sex intimate relationships… with the vessels they captained. Any marginally-attentive commander of a vessel afloat is in an intimate relationship with that vessel, and often characterized as "married" to that vessel. Since in English a vessel afloat is rigidly assigned a feminine gender — despite the formalized absence of "gender" in English grammar, referring to a vessel afloat as "it" or "he" will not make you any friends among its crew or the maritime community at large — that means these female officers were married to other females. We can't have that, and the ships are going to remain "she" for the forseeable future. Therefore, those female officers need to be forced out, before they endanger their souls with sin.
On further thought, though, maybe not. Maybe one or more of those vessels is gender-fluid, or even male-identifying transgender. Then, the female captain would not be married to a female. But I'm not sure that's better within this religious viewpoint, and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" seems both inappropriate and futile for treating the USS Shiloh as, well, a guy — just so a female marital partner is religiously acceptable. We certainly wouldn't want guided-missile cruisers being too butch and wearing pants all the time,3 and "women in combat boots" doesn't resemble "women in comfortable shoes" all that closely. Unfortunately, DOGE and the Shutdown are together preventing me from consulting with the Directorates of Euphemisms and of Naval Research for more (in)appropriate circumlocutions.
- Cf., e.g., Jennifer Nelson, The Role the Dutch Reformed Church Played in the Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 2 J. Hate Stud. 63 (2003) (PDF). n.b. The author grew up under apartheid. She would now be entitled to preferential treatment in immigration matters.
- The official, Congressionally-approved name, as is required for all executive departments (and certainly for those exercising an enumerated power); the name the current Administration would like it to have, for Reasons; and, based on what has been happening of late, its current conduct. Of course, the military members who actually pulled those triggers will assert the traditional defense: Dienst ist [sic] Dienst. Cf., e.g., Maj M. Keoni Medici & Maj Joshua P. Scheel, Training the Defense of Superior Orders: Honoring the Legacy of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg After 75 Years, 2020 Army Lawyer #6 (unpag.).
- If all of this seems ridiculous — including, and perhaps especially, the footnotes — that's how satire works. Oh, darn, I've revealed my hidden agenda. In the last footnote.