The law schools’ policy is categorical — no recruiters (private for-profit, religious non-profit, non-religious non-profit, government) may use campus facilities if they do not comply with the law schools’ non-discrimination policies:

AALS [Association of American Law Schools] bylaws require its member schools to have a non-discrimination clause that includes sexual orientation, and further require that a school’s facilities only be made available to employers whose practices are consistent with the AALS statement of equal opportunity.

So the policy itself makes no distinction between the military and other recruiters. The main difference with the military is that they have the power (now affirmed) to strong arm their way onto campus in violation of the law schools’ policy because they provide universities with federal funds.

Basic information about the policies and the Solomon Amendment litigation can be found here.

Razib (the one MD is refering to) had showed that most of the US military (commissioned officers and non-commissioned personnel) are whites % wise (if you normalize the datasets by the actual racial mix within America) through some of the data sets and studies. He had also showed that most of the casualities in Iraq if normalized by the general population diversity, then it is white.

From my observations, I think he is correct. For officer class, please go to any military academy or place like Texas A & M, and they often tend to be middle class to begin with.

Also often, poorer whites in South are as willing to join military as minorities as non-commissioned personel – there poverty is the common denominator.

I think lot of people confuse that they are disportionally far lesser minorities as officers but more as non-commissioned within their own racial group – I think that I have read that in many places. That is a different issue.

If Razib shows up, he will point to the data sets and studies.

The theocracies you mentioned are outside the United States, and I was talking about the institutionalization of religion vs. the institutionalization of the military in the US. I meant that there is an explicit emphasis on the separation of church and state in the US. I should have chosen better wording than “officially state institutionalized” because I would argue that certain religious constructs and processes are in fact institutionalized in the US, even at the constitutional level. But it is not the same as the military, which does not suppose itself to be separated from the state. Recruitment in the US is secularized. It is supposed to be a matter of national defense, and I don’t know the exact legalities, but I believe the state has a lot of flexibility in the name of national defense. I can imagine this is where things get messy when the universities are involved too. It’s in that situation, one can argue, the divestiture of Israeli assets and other such things occur most likely as a result of the university’s corporate partnerships, state sponsorships and such investments. So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s all related one way or another, but the state has an obligation to separate itself from religion, whereas it has no obligation to separate itself from its military.

What difference does it make? Let me take a wild guess and say that Ivy League placement offices will not look kindly at private defense contractors who are anti-gay (are there any?). BTW, the Catholic Church for example, has a state of its own in the Vatican. If certain universities can agitate for divestiture of Israeli assets, I don’t see why they cannot come up with a credible anti-Vatican divestiture program because of its anti-gay stance. In addition, a lot of states are explicitly Islamic – the univs can also come up with divestiture programs against those countries too because of Islam’s anti-gay stance. Not that there are lots of non-petroleum related investments in Islamic countries.

even if it indicates that blacks/latinos may be overrepresented in military it doesnot indicate they target disprivileged groups. All it would mean is certain groups find that employment agreement ok, while others dont. and one would have to consider educational backrounds of the groups.

I believe it broke down into the Military being overwhelmingly white, middle class, with the African American population under represented, hispanic population slightly overrepresented when compared to the census.

As per the racial discrimination, I guess I was speaking anecdotally, because that kind of discrimination is pretty apparent in the recruitment that goes on at my school. I won’t pretend to have done the kind of research that Razib has apparently done, and if it’s not already too exhausted on this site or too tedious to go over, I’d be open to hearing what his research indicates.

isn’t the problem here that FAIR disputed the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment (which only guides access but not conduct and thereby sidesteps the First Amendment), by taking aim at the constitutionality of the military, and not the Amendment

Are you suggesting that this lawsuit was an attempt to get “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” declared unconstitutional? If so, it wasn’t. The law schools wanted the military off their campuses so long as the military refuses to sign the same anti-discrimination policy every other on-campus interviewer signs. FAIR didn’t question the existence or constitutionality of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”