News :: GLBT
"Gay Bomb" Project Long Since Abandonedby Kilian MelloyTuesday Jun 5, 2007 Imagine getting together with ten thousand or so of your closest buddies, dressed up in uniform and charging about the countryside with a firm grip on your long, hard rifle stocks, getting all hot and sweaty in pursuit of your quarry, but then finding your noble intentions for warfare shattered by an irresistible, chemically-induced urge to abandon making war in favor of making love with the members of your own platoon. Sound implausible, imponderable, impossible? The U.S. military didn’t think so back in 1994 when they considered developing a "gay bomb."
Watchdog organization The Sunshine Project, which monitors development of chemical and biological weapons, found out about this and some other very interesting ideas, which were among various discarded research proposals into non-lethal ways of disabling enemy combatants, according to a BBC online article from January 15, 2005.
The news item may be an oldie, but it’s such a goodie that yesterday’s Huffington Post blogger Larry Arnstein resurrected the story.
"Isn’t it always the best ideas which fall by the wayside?" lamented Arnstein, going on to note, "By contrast, the whole idea of gay marriage, which could have a similar effect on society, is tediously slow."
The BBC story identified the "gay bomb" concept, along with a proposal to undermine enemy army cohesion by deploying a chemical compound meant to promote dissension among the enemy’s ranks by mimicking flatulence, and a project designed to mark out enemy combatants by giving them putrid breath.
The proposals were part of a package of "harassing, annoying, and ’bad-guy’-identifying" research proposals that originated at U.S. Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. The project sought a budget of $7.5 million (paltry by today’s military spending budget, which routinely sees bills authorizing sums of up to $100 billion for use in Iraq), but the six-year research plan was never authorized or funded.
The "gay bomb" or "love bomb" concept was promoted as "distasteful but completely non-lethal" as a means of disrupting enemy military action, and was perhaps the strangest among a very strange host of proposals that also included a "sting me / attack me" chemical meant to direct the hungry attention of wasps and rats toward enemy units that presumably would have been doused or misted with pest-attracting compounds. Another bright idea was a chemical that would renders soldiers’ skin excruciatingly sensitive to sunlight. The bad-breath concept was offered as a means to identify enemy soldiers even when they attempted to melt into a crowd of non-combatants.
The flatulence-mimicking chemical was one of the more venerable among the parcel of ideas from 1994, having been contemplated in one form or another since 1945. However, this turned out to be deemed one of the least effective techniques to demoralize the enemy in any real-world situation, since flatulence is not considered unusual or offensive in many other parts of the world.
In a military structure such as that of the U.S., however, the "gay bomb" idea perhaps carries the most potency, inviting images of battlefield carnage giving way to impromptu and wide-spread bouts of love amongst the ruins that would distract, if not incapacitate, enemy combatants long enough for still-manly American servicemembers to swoop in and mop up.
The BBC article quoted Capt. Dan McSweeney of the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate as saying that his department routinely considers "literally hundreds" of varied approaches to non-lethal combat options. But, McSweeney said, "It’s important to point out that only those proposals which are deemed appropriate, based on stringent human effects, legal, and [in line with] international treaty reviews are considered for development or acquisition."
Of course, that was then, and this is now. With international treaties meaning less every year, and the constantly shifting definition of what is "appropriate" in an age where the enemy may well be invisible, decentralized, non-governmentally directed, and motivated by strict religious beliefs, the demoralizing effects of a "gay bomb" may yet make the... let’s call it "the disco option"... more palatable to Pentagon officials.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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