Gen. John Sheehan

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Gen. John Sheehan — the retired four-star general of the U.S. Marine Corps who suggested back in March that gay soldiers were responsible for the Srebrenica massacre — have written a new POLITICO op-en in which they argue that repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is “a political charade to mask a foreordained conclusion.”

Perkins and Sheehan predict that President Obama will alter the Pentagon’s review of the policy to suit his own political agenda and suggest that openly gay men would spread AIDS to the troops and engage in homosexual “behavior” that is “detrimental” to the military:

Yet homosexuality carries with it profound behavioral implications. Sexual attraction among members of the same sex — living, exercising, fighting and training alongside one another in the closest of quarters — could devastate morale, foster heightened interpersonal tension and lead to division among those who, more than virtually any other group in society, need to act as one. [...]

In addition, the medical implications of Obama’s proposal are compelling. According to data released last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gay and bisexual men are 50 times more likely to have HIV than heterosexual men….This proposal is not about bigotry. Race is a superficial and benign element of one’s humanness, while homosexuality is a matter of behavior.

Homosexuality is not about civil rights but conduct detrimental to the discipline, trust and combat readiness of what has been — and still is — the world’s finest military.

Earlier this year, Sheehan apologized to former Dutch Chief of Staff Van den Breemen for his suggestion that gays caused the massacre, saying that his memory of discussions they had fifteen years ago about some social issues were ‘inaccurate.’ “Sheehan also said that individual soldiers were in “no way” responsible for the massacre. Now, it seems that Perkins has convinced him that gays can be responsible for at least some of the problems in the U.S. forces (H/T: Right Wing Watch).

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly may have compared gay people to Al Qaeda, but he was right about one thing: the French McDonalds ad, “come as you are,” featuring a gay boy talking to his boyfriend will never air in the United States. McDonald’s Chief Operating Officer Donald Thompson is telling the Chicago Tribune that the ad runs counter to American cultural norms:

THOMPSON: It is an example that markets, cultures are very different around the world. (For instance), I’ve never shied away from the fact that I’m a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don’t impose those on anybody else. I’ve been in countries where the majority of the people in the country don’t believe in a deity or they may be atheist. Or the majority of the country is Muslim. Or it may be the majority is much younger skewed. So when you look at all these differences, it’s not that I’m to be the judge or the jury relative to right or wrong. Having said that, at McDonald’s, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations. We’re going to make some mistakes at times. (We talk) about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world. And those are things that, yes, we’re going to learn from. But, you’re right, that commercial won’t show in the United States.

Watch the ad:

The young man in this ad is gay and hasn’t yet come out to his father. But the message transcends sexuality; it explores the common themes of teenage romance and parent-teenager misunderstandings. The ‘come as you are’ tag line suggests that these things are just a natural fact of life and have little to do with sexual orientation.

To be fair, it’s unclear what Thompson is saying. On one hand, he’s suggesting that the company’s respect for diversity and sensitivity to different cultures encouraged it to run the ‘come as you are’ ad in France. Yet, he’s also implying that inclusivity runs counter to American culture and that some would be offended by the ad.

But Americans are becoming increasingly accepting of seeing gays and lesbians in the media. According to a new CBS News poll, only 43% of Americans currently see homosexual relations between consenting adults as “wrong” – a drop of 19 percentage points from a Gallup poll taken in 1978. Gallup found that “Americans’ support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010,” with “a 16-point jump in acceptance among Catholics.”

Thompson’s reading of American culture is outdated, but to keep the 43% of Americans who think homosexuality as wrong as customers, he is willing to ignore what he describes as the company’s so-called “core values.” (H/T: Joe.My.God)