AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

Disclaimer: because I'm not sure this won't come off as aggressive (I do have very strong feelings about the subject, but not outwardly directed), I need to stress that I am not trying to disagree with the fact that discrimination in any shape is unconscionable and I'm not trying to be beligerent here.

You're right, I am viewing this from the perspective of someone who has, so far, managed to find other ways. But I also speak from the perspective of someone who grew up with The Army in their life (my grandfather was a Colonel, career Army man, and the main authority figure in my family - every day was abstract boot camp). Having seen firsthand the implications of and intentions behind the existence of The Army as a corpus (regardless of country), both historically and contemporarily, I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldn't join The Army even if it was my last option. I'd much rather join an informal Citizens' Militia if practical needs for such should arise, because I'm in it to defend people, not to kill the Enemy.

This is not to say that I judge anyone who does so based on limited options, not even close to it. I've had my fair share of scraping by and I know how survival allows for very little philosophy. Nor is it an attempt to dilute the grotesqueness of this rampant discrimination, as I agree that people should be allowed to make their own choices and carry the resulting repercussions regardless of domain.

What I am saying is that I cannot agree with The Army as a viable option for anything, let alone as a justifiable institution for any form of rational society. I can appreciate that it fosters some truly valuable skills, like discipline (I don't mean learning to bow down to Authority), the establishment of routine, physical health (at least the training routines do), but those skills can be fostered in many other ways (I'd rather we spent half of all global military budgets on training more Emergency Responders with added basic combat training in the extreme case it's necessary, because we'll obviously need them) and as an institution it exists solely for mass aggression. And that is the element with which I will never agree.

So, yeah, this is why I will continue to be of the opinion that sparing as many people as possible from joining the Army is a good end, but that it is reached through unjustifiable means in this case.