The Patriot Post® · Wasting Marine Manpower and Money

The Marine Corps will begin using gender-neutral job titles and course names in October. Barack Obama’s Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus, who recently announced that a new ship will be named for homosexual activist Harvey Milk, sent the following directive to Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller: “Please review the position titles throughout the Marine Corps and ensure that they are gender-integrated as well, removing ‘man’ from the titles.” Among the changes, a former “Basic Infantryman” will now be a “Basic Infantry Marine,” and a former “Tank Crewman” will now be an “Armor Marine.”

The Marine Corps is proud to call all of its members, regardless of gender, Marines. So it would seem there is no harm done calling an “Infantryman” an “Infantry Marine.” But the order is yet another waste of man person-power and taxpayer dollars to overhaul and reprint an untold number of doctrinal publications, administrative documents, signs and other such items in order to comply with Obama’s puppet-secretary’s order. The funds required for this policy directive would be much better invested in improving Marine fighting capabilities and morale. This type of waste does not go unnoticed by the Marines it affects.

Of note, the Marine Corps elected to retain the word “man” in several of its historically significant and fundamental terms, including “rifleman” and “mortarman.” But after Defense Secretary Ash Carter refused the Marine Corps’ attempts to protect its combat effectiveness by foregoing gender normalization, it’s only a matter of time until those time-honored terms also collapse under PC pressure for “non-gendered pronouns.” The Obama administration’s highly publicized agenda betrays its commander in chief’s priorities: political correctness over mission-effectiveness.