Gender biases in the selective service

By Alex Demille

Turning 18 means different things to everyone. To some, it represents a transition from childhood to maturity. To others, it offers liberation from the legal bonds of being a minor.

To every single male in the United States, it means a nice little birthday card from the Department of Defense, urging him to register for the Selective Service and threatening grave legal consequences for his failure to do so. Happy birthday!

I am a fairly patriotic person. I am not morally opposed to a draft, so I filled out the form, licked the stamp, and sent my registration to Uncle Sam with little hesitation.

I try to look at the big picture, taking into account national security and future generations of Americans. I am prepared to protect my country in a time of need. Yet, after further thought, I noticed a blatant inconsistency, a shameful hypocrisy.

My sister never had to do this. My female friends are not receiving these forms in the mail. In fact, not a single woman in America is asked to do what I did on my 18th birthday. By law, women cannot serve in front-line combat.

I am not disputing this law. Women would not make effective combat soldiers, and being in positions would put them at a greater risk than men. Combat troops, however, make up only a minority of the armed forces. There are countless jobs that women could do—they could work as doctors, nurses, technicians, truck drivers, military trainers, and other positions that require little more than the ability to operate machinery and equipment.

With this in mind, I have yet to hear an adequate argument as to why women are not required to register with the Selective Service. So I decided to hear it from the source. I went to the Selective Service System website (http://www.sss.gov). The government offers various justifications for this gender discrimination. The government maintains that the exclusion of women from mandatory Selective Service registration is constitutional, as the 1981 Rostker v. Goldberg case proved. The Supreme Court held that the decision to require only men to register was consistent with Congress' duty "to raise and support Armies." The Department of Defense agrees with this view, adding that America's previous drafts were used to supply adequate numbers of ground combat troops.

I don't believe that for a second. In Vietnam, the most recent war to require a draft, not every single draftee was armed with an M-16 and sent into the jungle. Drafted men filled many of the aforementioned noncombat positions. And as warfare becomes more technologically advanced, such positions will become even more vital to the armed forces.

This is not a matter of practicality or military effectiveness. It is a question of equality and justice. I believe it to be in the best interest of all Americans, male and female, to tear down one more hypocrisy in our supposedly equal society.

We are a generation brought up to believe that everyone has equal rights and responsibilities, that the phrase "all men are created equal" refers not just to men, but to all of mankind.

I sincerely hope that we never again become involved in a conflict that would require a draft. Unfortunately, idealism is usually far from the truth, and the coming millennium brings with it a world wrought with conflict and strife. We would be foolish not to acknowledge that anything could happen.

If that unforeseen potential conflict arrives in the form of an all-out war, do we not want to come armed with a force that reflects the ideals of the nation that we are fighting for? If not, then what is it that we are fighting for in the first place?

Alex DeMille is a freshman in Timothy Dwight.

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