In an attempt to play the honest broker...
The examples you give are a trifle spurious...
Homesexuality was just institutionalised discrimination...nothing to do with anybody's fitness to carry out a task. In a modern, civilised society such discrimatiion has no place. End of.
Similarly the old rules on WRAFs and pregnancy were gender discrimination. Men and women are different and therefore the rules on employment and military service have to reflect those differences within the bounds of fairness and common sense. Booting out a career WRAF forever because she has had a sprog is not just bang out of order, it is stupid beyond belief...not much more enlightened than the leaders who subscribe to the following mentality:
...
see those fortified machine gun posts over there...have ten thousand men run at them in daylight tomorrow, pass the cheese board please...
That said the point is valid. Retiring people at a set age is illogical, dull and unfair. The military love fitness tests and health checks....use them with a bit of creativity. If a 57 year old is fit enough to carry out the full range of his military tasks, he/she should not be forcibly retired on age grounds.
If a chiselling porker is not fit enough to do their full range of tasks at 47 they should be forcibly retired.
Gotta say though...why anybody who has qualified for a full service pension would want to stay for one second longer than their fifty fifth birthday is an utter mystery to me. I mean, I know despite all the aggro and b*ggeration, for many of us service life is/was a total blast, but, believe me, retirement on a large wedge....f**ing awesome!!!
