http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/ent...t/10733802.htm
Gay Bomb? Surely, it would be a dud
By Jeff Weinstein
Philly Inquirer Columnist
Brainstorming is terribly important. It's part of the way new things get made, get done. So who could be surprised to find out that our military pays think tanks to think about tanks? Not us - except when we read that a decade ago, a "nonlethal weapons" group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, came up with the idea for a Gay Bomb.
Now, let me be perfectly clear. The Pentagon says that "Gay Bomb" wasn't its name for this hypothetical aphrodisiac implement of war that would make enemy combatants lay down their arms and rush into one another's. And it nipped this particular WMD (weapon of male delectation) in the bud by rejecting further funding.
One can only wonder which plans were thumbs-upped.
Still, the mind reels, and that's because there's reason to believe that had it been brought to fruition in some sort of secret Manhattan (or Chelsea) Project, a Gay Bomb would very likely backfire. Doesn't anyone read history, or even watch the History Channel?
But let's first get a few technical things straight. The Gay Bomb - sprayed, we assume, like Calvin Klein's Eternity onto the fields of war - was supposed to force faithful family men to seek out the nearest pair of fellow-soldier lips, causing a "distasteful but completely nonlethal blow to morale."
Turns 'em gay. So far, so good. But Dayton, Ohio, seems to have forgotten about ancient Greece. Did none of the experts recall Homer's praise of Achilles' deep, deep devotion to his battlefield buddy, Patroclus? Or the method by which Phaedrus, one of Plato's most convincing mouthpieces in his Symposium, hoped to strengthen esprit de corps?
And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city... . and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; love would inspire him.
Lest we think the speaker was a recruiter with a hidden agenda, his theory actually had been tested by the real-life Sacred Band of Thebes, a martial force made up of 150 pairs of lovers. The boyfriends were embedded two by two in sundry regiments and later gathered to become a cadre of shock troops. Everyone says they were hard to beat.
Of course we can't blame the think-tankers in Ohio for not having seen Troy or Alexander, because the movies hadn't come out yet. (Having ourselves sat through Alexander, we will excuse anyone who has seen it as well.) Yet, on further thought, maybe these Dayton Dr. Strangeloves weren't completely off-target.
An aphrodisiac such as theirs, even if one could be fashioned, even if it took the form of a bomb, would not cause anyone to fall in love - certainly not in love enough to be embarrassed if your domestic partner sees you fink out in the trenches. Fall into sex, maybe; into love, never.
So maybe a Sex Bomb, rather than Gay Bomb, would work. Could a Sex Bomb render the enemy careless about his safety? Sure, we already have plenty of data on that. Blind him to the object of his lust? Easy, happens all the time.
But could it make him or anyone else Band-of-Thebes gay? No way. Because if that were possible, the parallel weapon that's been in development for centuries, the so-called Straight Bomb, would have been deployed long ago, to devastating effect.
US planned to make love not war with 'gay bomb'
Linear Mode
