Not only is he against gay families, heterosexual couples are under attack as well. You see, when you send troops off to war and force them to do two, three, four or more tours of duty it does irreperable harm to the homefront. Married life comes to an absolute stand still as the one who stays home is alone and the soldier is placed in a completely different world.
Due to the war, the bonds of marriage are easily shattered and the statistics prove it. Nearly 60,000 divorces have been attributed to the war with over a million people being sent to Iraq over the course of four years. Factors that contribute to this number include the effects of PTSD, adulterous relationships and the reality that the bond between two people is undone by being so far apart for so long.
From The Progressive:
Twenty-four hours after Lorin boarded the plane for Iraq, I hung a blue star service flag—denoting an immediate family member in combat—in the front window. Then I closed the blinds, hoping to keep the harbingers of death at bay. They still got in, through the phone, the Internet, the newspaper, and the TV.
(snip)Two months into his deployment, I got a call from him, and he said, choking up, that there was an “accident.” Two Iraqi children were dead because he gave the order to fire a couple of mortar rounds. Several weeks later, he phoned again, his voice flat and emotionless, to tell me that the men he had dinner with the previous night had been killed by the same Iraqi soldiers that they were training six hours earlier.
Days went by without any communication—anxious hours, restless nights. I swerved between anger and fear.
Emotional isolation is one of the hallmarks of post-combat mental health problems. The National Guard didn’t conduct follow-up mental health screening or evaluations of the men in my husband’s company until they had been home for almost eight months. Nearly a year later, in August of 2006, my husband was informed of his results: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It was obvious that he was suffering, but when I brought it up, he parroted what the military told him: “Give it time.”
(snip)
It was hard to reconnect after more than a year apart, and the open wound of untreated PTSD made it virtually impossible. Lorin is still the best evidence I have of God’s grace in this world, but we just couldn’t find our way back together after the war came home.
I cut up the article as best I could to make the point of what PTSD can do to a couple, but you should definitely read the whole thing. The ravages of war are not bound by the borders of Iraq. I find it hard to believe that any man or woman does not carry what they hear, see and do in a combat zone out of Iraq and into their lives back at home. War is a terrible thing for any human being to endure. Of course war is sometimes necessary due to the crazy world we live in. Yet this war had no business being fought. Sure Saddam was a bad man and what he did to Iraqis was horrendous, but there are plenty of terrible situations going on throughout the globe and we had no business getting involved over there, we need to get out now before we cause any more damage. That goes for the Iraqis and our brave soldiers.
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