1911
Jan. 15: Under most distressing circumstances, Rear Admiral Edward Buttervant Barry, commander in chief of the Pacific fleet, has been forced to retire after 46 years of honorable service in the United States Navy. The situation in which his officers claim the Admiral was discovered in his quarters on the flagship West Virginia on Tuesday night is of such a nature as to forbid explicit statement in print. It may be sufficient to say that the same vice which caused the downfall of Oscar Wilde is the charge brought against Admiral Barry.
On Tuesday evening a meeting of officers was held on board the West Virginia, at which it was proposed that a loaded revolver be sent to the Admiral's room, carrying its sinister suggestion of one way out of the disgrace for the aged commander. The suggestion was put to a vote and the decision of the majority was that the Admiral be given the opportunity to resign. Instead of resigning Admiral Barry requested his immediate retirement.
If the Secretary of the Navy allows Admiral Barry to retire he will receive three-fourths of his $7,600 salary for life. "We expect that Captain Orchard (of the West Virginia) will recommend to the Secretary of the Navy that the West Virginia be placed out of commission and that the crew be scattered among other ships," one of the officers said after he learned every member of the crew knew the admiral's disgrace.
The situation is unparalleled in the annals of the United States Navy. Unbelievable as it would have seemed, Admiral Barry has been practically ostracized by the officers of the Pacific fleet for a considerable time. When the officers of the Japanese training ship were given a reception at the Fairmont Hotel on November 24, it was noticed that the other officers of the fleet left Admiral Barry severely alone.
This fact was commented on at the time.
More info here.
2 comments:
1. Strange how the beginning of popular "liberation" culture ("the 1960s") in opposition to the war in Vietnam and to the "war machine" in general has evapourated.
We read this story in bewilderment and dismay that such intense homophobia was once a reality in the officer class of the military. We don't read this story with the sense that "well, obviously, military machismo institutions are going to be murderously homophobic. That's why the war machine should be abolish'd!"
We oppose this or that "war" (in Iraq, Afganistan, etc) but gone is the (unPickwickianly interpreted) demand that military aircraft "turn into butterflies above our nation." Military institutions are now systems in which liberation should proceed: abolition of discrimination against women, minorities, gays, etc (although we assume and accept that low-class Christian fundamentalist white males should be kept out of the officer class until they change their [cultural] orientation).
2. Incidentally we have also forgotten that Western idealism especially since Rousseau but presumably before too rely'd on Christian doctrine and holy Writ as little as possible in demonizing homosexuality. Marx and Engels' 'homophobia' was Victorian moralism and was maintain'd in the USSR right to the end. Freud and the medical establishment not Elmer Gantry drove the cultural assumptions that homosexuality is wrong (an embarrassing medical illness and psychological immaturity caused by an embarrassing failure to resolve psycho-dynamic conflicts in childhood).
The strictest taboos are maintain'd without appeal to the Bible: providing an explanation or even a foundation weakens the intensity of the compliance that is desired. When liberals began pointing to Christian fundamentalists and the Bible (qua interpreted by Christian fundamentalists) as the explanation for 'homophobia' they protected the medical establishment from opprobrium for the history of homophobia in modern culture, but this made deeper perceptions possible. (Blaming the Bible is always 'dangerous.')
3. Since "scandals" like this were surely common (apparently in navies much more than in land armies or, later, air forces), I wonder if the other officers held their hostility to this admiral with such intensity because of his shocking carelessness: to commit this "vice" in his own quarters on board his own ship, rather than discretely elsewhere as would be possible for an admiral.
Correctly or not, the officers may have felt that homosexual chaos must be always ready to break out in groups of men isolated from women (the usual explanation for one's own tendencies to go 'that way'): discipline aboard ship and the honour of society would be removed if the navy did not make every effort to suppress this vice. Accordingly officers and especially admirals must preserve every appearance of honourableness in front of the ordinary sailors.
The officers perhaps interpreted this admiral's actions as expressing a breakdown of concern for naval discipline and the honour of the navy in the eyes of society. Perhaps they were correct in their interpretation, unless we are to suppose that the admiral had made a study of 'androphile' literature, had concluded that homosexual pairs were the best way to promote military courage, and decided that going ahead and having sex with a guy in his quarters aboard ship was the right way to begin this re-founding of manly discipline in the American military.
Consider this scenario: an admiral in a navy supported by an Islamic country has decided Christianity is the true religion or has decided that there is no God and Mohammed was a fraud, and he carelessly mentions his conclusions in front of some sailors. The other officers force him to retire, and the navy even decommissions his ship.
All this is understood by the officers and the military establishment to be in a way absurd: a man's own private "metaphysical" conclusions have no direct relation to his courage, military discipline, competence etc, and these things aren't in doubt for this atheist or Christian admiral. But for him to carelessly mention his private opinions in front of the sailors expresses a total incomprehension of the 'social foundations' of the military, and an arrogant disregard for his military duties. In response the other officers and the military establishment have to show that they are fanatical Muslim believers.
Western liberals would assume that an officer in a military establishment in an Islamic country must be dismiss'd as a matter of course if he decided to opt for an atheistic or Christian personal worldview. Homophobic fanaticism like racism, sexism, elitism etc is accepted as a reality in 'other cultures,' but 'our culture' must not be founded on absurdities such as exclusivisms and phobias.
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