"...for the majority of the 343,000 personnel in the U.S. Navy, the mission is mostly one of readiness and deterrence, but rarely if ever of actual combat. This reality is apparently contributing to the challenge of recruiting new personnel, because as anyone who has read naval history knows, even during war, much of shipboard life is matter of dull routine. How to entice young men to serve on ships on which young women are a tiny minority—that is, places of confinement, isolation, restricted in almost every conceivable way?

For the last two hundred years, the Roman Catholic Church has faced a similar challenge in its effort to recruit priests and monks. As an ex Catholic priest once told me, one approach was to recruit gay boys from poor regions of the world who, because they are naturally attracted to men, did not perceive monastic life to be an onerous deprivation.

The U.S. Navy seems to have taken a leaf from the same playbook with its new "digital ambassador,” 24-year-old sailor Joshua Kelly, who is also a drag queen."

PETER A. MCCULLOUGH, MD, MPH™
and JOHN LEAKE

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/in-the-navy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email