Mankind has always looked to women to lead them into battle. For the Greeks, it was Athena, standing strong and proud, guiding them with her wisdom against the approaching hordes. When man first set sail for foreign shores, he placed the figurehead of a woman on the bow of his ship to guide him safely and appease the gods of the sea. Later, when he took to the air, he painted scantily clad women on his flying machines for much the same reason. Nowadays, women just come along, often fighting side-by-side with men.

Whether it’s for guidance or motivation or just to show the enemy we have something worth fighting for, armies have always looked to women in some form to join them in battle. But if U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) has his way, that could change.

Rep. Broun has introduced legislation that would lower the threshold of what the military sees as “sexually explicit” material.  This would ban the sale of magazines such as FHM, Maxim, Penthouse, and Playboy that contain photographs of nude or scantily clad women.

I would argue that, much like the M.R.E., the canteen, and the automatic rifle, these magazines are staples of the United States Armed Forces. Since WWI, there hasn’t been an aircraft, ground force, or seafaring vessel without at least one copy of “naughty” literature making the rounds among the troops. Yes, there have always been moral arguments about these materials, but is the military the place for Americans to express their universally square attitude toward sexuality?

I’m a big fan of WWII-era tattoos, and I’ve seen more than one grandfather with a fantastic interpretation of a pin-up girl tattooed on his forearm, and these guys were the “greatest generation.” I even met a veteran at a casino craps table once who stormed the beaches at Normandy. He had a hula girl on his left bicep that he could make dance suggestively enough for me to buy him a drink afterwards. The man was an honest-to-God hero who just happened to have a half-naked woman on his arm.

The argument against explicit materials in the military is moot from the beginning, because it is an attempt to keep out of the hands of soldiers materials that have already been protected by the Supreme Court (thank you, Larry Flynt). Whether you object to these materials under your child’s mattress or not, you are still blocking a soldier from enjoying the fruits of the rights he is fighting to protect. Too often, dogmatic morals impede on the rights guaranteed to every American in the Constitution. The Moral Majority is neither; they just tend to have the loudest voices.