As President "Whenever" Obama continues to drag his feet on his campaign promise to repeal DADT, I was struck by this story about women serving in the military in the Monday New York Times.

For generations, people argued that women could not serve in combat roles not just because, you know, they're girls and so not physically capable of soldiering, but also because the very presence of women would ruin unit cohesion and morale. Essentially, the same argument homophobes and bigots make against gays serving, and the argument once made against racial integration.

Well, once again reality refutes the bigots. Some money quotes:

Opponents of integrating women in combat zones long feared that sex would mean the end of American military prowess. But now birth control is available — the PX at [Forward Operating Base] Warhorse even sold out of condoms one day recently — reflecting a widely accepted reality that soldiers have sex at outposts across Iraq.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first in which tens of thousands of American military women have lived, worked and fought with men for prolonged periods. Wars without front lines, they have done more than just muddle the rules meant to keep women out of direct enemy contact.

They have changed the way the United States military goes to war. They have reshaped life on bases across Iraq and Afghanistan. They have cultivated a new generation of women with a warrior’s ethos — and combat experience — that for millennia was almost exclusively the preserve of men.

This new reality—women can be, and are, accomplished and professional soldiers—hasn't changed the fact that sexual harassment, and assault, are far too common. And, as usual, these problems are put in terms of the potential subject positions men can imagine women in:

Staff Sgt. Patricia F. Bradford, 27, a psychological operations soldier, said that slights, subtle and not, were common, and some were easier to brush off than others. Women are still viewed derisively at times in the confined, occasionally tense space of an outpost like Warhorse.

“You’re a bitch, a slut or a dyke — or you’re married, but even if you’re married, you’re still probably one of the three,” Sergeant Bradford said.

At the same time, she and other female soldiers cope with the slights, showing a disarming brashness.

“I think being a staff sergeant — and a bitch — helps deflect those things,” she added.

And take the following passage, change "separating the sexes" for "kicking out the gay men and lesbians":

The issues that arise in having women in combat — harassment, bias, hardship, even sexual relations — are, she and others said, a matter of discipline, maturity and professionalism rather than an argument for separating the sexes.

Finally, the last word which will, if the President every comes through, be something said about gays in the military a few years down the road:

“There was a lot of debate over where women should be,” said Brig. Gen. Heidi V. Brown, one of the two highest ranking women in Iraq today, recalling the start of the war. “Here we are six years later, and you don’t hear about it. You shouldn’t hear about it.”

And we won't hear about it anymore once bigotry is seen for what it is.