More on Data and DADT

With due respect, this doesn't cut it:

In the first, we are told that there are other fine militaries around the world in which gays are allowed to serve openly. In this latest edition of this line of thinking, the Australian, British, Canadian and Israeli Armed Services are put forward as examples of countries where "unit cohesion" issues are apparently insufficient to stymie gay service. I take a backseat to no one in admiration of these country's armed services, but come on now--who'd you take in a fight with us? The Canadians? The Australians? I know, I know--that's not what the proponents are saying--but what I'M SAYING is that there is only one global superpower and the forces and influences upon ITS combat readiness are different and more important than those that impact any other nations.

I'm sorry; "come on" doesn't constitute an argument. If you're going to suggest that allowing gays to openly serve negatively affects the application of military power, then you have to give some explanation of why that's the case. The "unit cohesion" is one such effort at an argument, although it has notably failed; there is thus far no meaningful data that indicates that openly serving gay soldiers negatively effect the capability of tactical units. If you want to SAY that there is only one global superpower and the forces and influences upon ITS combat readiness are different and more important than those that impact any other nations, then you must at least hint at what those forces and influences might be; if you know what you have in mind tell us, and if you don't, then please stop making the argument that the experiences of other major military organizations don't matter. Call me a crazy academic, but I need both a causal argument and some data indicating the validity of that causal argument before I accept this line of thinking.

I suppose you could argue that not enough data exists, and that it would be irresponsible for the United States to risk its military effectiveness on the experimental introduction of openly gay soldiers into its military organizations. To this I would respond that, again, you need a convincing argument about a) how openly serving gays has damaged the military effectiveness of Israeli*, German, British, Australian, and Canadian units, or b) a convincing argument about why none of these should be relevant to the US case. Neither of these are here; that the US military is bigger than the British can't in and of itself explain why unit level effects for similar sized units would be different in the UK than in the US.

So, again; "come on" doesn't constitute an argument that anyone has an obligation to respect. Please specify terms, articulate a relationship between variables, explain how we might test, and introduce some data. The advocates of openly serving gay soldiers have already done this; it's time for the opponents to step up to the plate.

*The argument has been made in a couple of places that the German and Israeli experiences shouldn't count because those countries retain conscription. This would make some sense if either Israel or Germany had anything approaching full conscription, but they don't. Escaping military conscription in Germany has been easy since before the end of the Cold War, and has been relatively easy in Israel since the mid-1990s. The Israelis have discarded the idea that mass is an important determinant of military effectiveness, and have consequently made the avoidance of conscription, even by military age males, relatively easy. If the IDF really believed that excluding gays would increase its effectiveness, then it is entirely capable of doing so.