The Case Against Gays in the Military: Open homosexuality would threaten unit cohesion and military effectiveness.

Mackubin Thomas Owens writes at the Wall Street Journal: “And the most important is expressed in the 1993 law: that open homosexuality is incompatible with military service because it undermines the military ethos upon which success in war ultimately depends . . . Philia, the bond among disparate individuals who have nothing in common but facing death and misery together, is the source of the unit cohesion that most research has shown to be critical to battlefield success . . . The presence of open homosexuals in the close confines of ships or military units opens the possibility that eros—which unlike philia is sexual, and therefore individual and exclusive—will be unleashed into the environment . . . “