Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship under the 1944 - Essay Example

This means the author believes that satisfactory attention was not paid to the soldiers before passing the bill. In order to achieve his aim, the author looks at the issues behind the GI bill from a broad perspective. The author begins by examining how other authors have brought out their views on the G.I bill in support of their views against homosexuality. First, he reveals how the Bill is still being celebrated by scholars as one of the most important innovations in public policy. These authors have achieved a high level of advocacy against homosexuality by revealing one important aspect of the G.

I bill, that is, moving millions of Americans who are of working class into the middle class. They go ahead to point out some of the most important benefits that helped to move citizens from one socio-economic status to the other. By stating the most interesting and beneficial sides of the Bill, these authors dilute the resentment that people could have towards the G.I bill because of excluding homosexual citizens from the GI benefits. The author begins to make his arguments against the G.I bill by pointing out some critics to the same bill by other historians.

According to Canaday (936) states that feminist historians discovered that the GI bill did not only discriminate against the homosexuals. It also had a heterosexual bias. This is seen from the fact that it positioned married men as the most deserving citizens because the benefits of the bill were filtered through marriages. This means those men who were not married and were not homosexuals underwent a touch process to get the GI benefits. Canaday however disagrees with the feminist historians to some extend as well because of focusing on the heterosexuals while leaving the homosexuals in their critic of the GI bill.

The author advocates full democracy as a sign of full developed citizenship. This is seen where he concurs with Marshall in regard to his view of social citizenship in a society were citizenship was moving towards being more democratic. Canaday reveals another reason why the GI bill can be said to be unfair to the homosexuals. He says that homosexuals were not just locked out of the benefits of the GI bill because they did not fit into the model of heterosexual family. Instead, the exclusion was already was already built into the foundation of the state welfare.

The author also manages to gather support against policies related to the GI bill like the 1945 ruling by the Veteran Administration (VA) policy. Even though he does not agree with the way the GI bill treated the sexual minorities, the he reveals inefficiencies in these policies to exclude the homosexuals from G.I benefits. There were also other unfair effects of the GI bill to the homosexuals. These included high rate of loss of jobs due to the blue