> people are treated fairly and given equal opportunity regardless of who they are. I also agree with channeling most of our resources toward developing those who have shown to be exceptional

Mutually exclusive. When mother wolf feeds her strongest pup and ignores the weak pups she's ruthlessly discriminating and it is the best for the survival of their species. I work as a math and physics teacher and I discriminate between my students. I give extra more challenging assignments to my smartest students and I make time to help them in the evenings. As a result my students are winning National and International Olympiads, five years in row in math and 2 years in row in physics my students are making it to the National Olympiad teams. That's the result of my focus on the most promising students.
> with women being a part of our military and so many other things that were typically done by men of course it creates challenges. I'm not saying women shouldn't be in any particular line of work

Women absolutely should be discriminated against being in military for two main reasons.

1. Women are physically inferior to men. Women who pass physical tests do so by bare minimum. Let me explain. Let's say you have a physical test. For the sake of keeping it simple, let's say the passing score is 6. A lot of women will pass this test by doing 6 or 7, which is in itself is not really problem. The problem is what happens after, when they get in the military. These women are already at their physical peak and no matter how much they train, they will never get to 9-10. Meanwhile, many men who passed the initial screening with 6-7 will become bigger, stronger, faster. When I did my military service(mandatory in my country) I saw this with my own eyes. Many weak men that had no prior training whatsoever surpassed women, who were coming from military academies after years of education and training, within few months. By accepting women into military you are settling with physical mediocrity and giving up on those who potentially could reach much higher physical prowess.
2. Women drop out of military with much higher rate, most within five years. This is true, at least in my country, don't know how it is in US or other western countries. Main two reasons they give 1. they get married and 2. stress of the work. So, government spends 5 years feeding, training, educating women in military academies and most of them drop out of military within 5 years. That's huge waste of resources, negative ROI frankly speaking. Government should stop accepting women in military.

ps. I hope mods will allow this discussion to continue at least for couple of days and allow people to debate against my points.