Australia is seriously considering changing the rules for front-line combat. Instead of making that decision based on sex, they’ll be making that decision based on qualifications. This change ought to pass, and probably will.
Keeping women from the front lines is one of the last bastions of chivalry. It’s one more practice that pretends to value women while devaluing them by disregarding their choices, encouraging weakness, and fostering cowardice.
Despite what a long way we’ve come, there are two things women can’t do: fight on the front lines and be ministers of God. There’s a connection there: women aren’t kept from the front lines because of gallantry – that’s only a guise, a sincere one, maybe, but a guise nonetheless. Deep down, those who want women away from the front lines are also the ones who view the military as a kind of army of God, and infantry as soldiers of God. It’s a priestly role, and that’s why women have been denied it.
And that’s exactly why they should have it.
