The Naval Academy is actively seeking to hire a “specialist in Gender and Sexuality Studies” to bring midshipmen “up to date” with LGBT issues. Authors known for holding leftist, feminist, and sexually activist views such as Audre Lorde, Sarah Ahmed, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Gloria Anzaldua will be studied.
According to the course description, the midshipmen will focus on “theories, histories, perspectives, and/or major figures in LGBTQ, [and] women’s and/or gender studies.” Because the Navy pays for all of cadet tuition, and other expenses as well, the funding for these courses will come from taxpayers.
In addition to the course on Gender and Sexuality, within the Naval Academy’s English Department, students may also enroll in a course on Latinx Studies, which discusses “identity formation through many of its facets, including: class, race, gender, sexuality, and language (among others).”
In response to the information given about the course, observers are wondering how learning about gender and sexuality theory will help Navy sailors become more effective. Travis Weber, a Naval Academy alumnus and current vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, provided insight based on his academy experience.
“If it is being taught in a way that ends up forming worldview, not only is it unhelpful, but it is detrimental,” he told The Washington Stand. Weber noted how men and women in the Naval Academy are being prepared “specifically for future service.” If the Navy’s goal is to teach LGBT matters in the Naval Academy as “correct,” as Weber stated, then it would not support the overall goal for these midshipmen to be prepared for service. “I know,” he added. “I went to the Naval Academy. I experienced what they’re going through.”
Weber emphasized how understanding the objective of these courses is not just important, but crucial to the discussion. “As Christians, we should know what’s going on,” he shared. “[But] I fail to see how the excessive amount of learning regarding the nation’s current cultural fad [of] identity politics, critical theory, and LGBT [is helpful] … for midshipmen training for future service in the Navy.”
Weber went on to explain how it is in fact “contradictory to unit cohesion” to prioritize these issues since they are, as he put it, “inherently divisive.” He shared how critical theory, for example, causes people to be identified by their skin color, class, and other human categories. “This is in contradiction [to] what God says about the human person, that we are all created in the image of God,” he said. “That is the basis of unity on which a body of midshipmen at the Naval Academy should be formed.”
Concerns over what is being taught at America’s military academies have caught the attention of Republican leaders, who, in the most recent National Defense Authorization Act debate fought to ban critical race theory and other far-left ideologies that have nothing to do with warfighting, they argued.
Weber concluded that unless this material is taught as strictly informative, it cannot be of any benefit to the mission of the Naval Academy and future service. “The only caveat to this is if the Naval Academy can prove that it is teaching this in an informative manner so that midshipmen can understand it within the housing of the ethical framework they are being taught,” he said. “But I’m unclear what that ethical framework is based on right now.”
Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.
