Since it was implemented in 1993, over 12,500 men and women have been dismissed from the Armed Forces under the provisions of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. More than 800 of those individuals have held positions deemed “mission critical” by the military. They were not dismissed for the failure to perform their duties, they did so, often with honor and distinction. They were not dismissed for refusing to serve and possibly die in the service of their country. They were not dismissed for a lack of patriotism.
They were dismissed for the sole reason that to the military the act of honestly stating your personal sexual orientation as a homosexual is a homosexual act. They have not, in the vast majority of cases, been accused of sexually assaulting another person or for engaging in sexual behavior with another person. They were not even accused of flaunting their sexual orientation.
Gays have served honorably in the U.S. military for decades, for the most part undetected and unnoticed. If gays serving in the military is sure to lead to disruptions in the barracks and a lowering of overall moral, as many opposed to their service contend, where’s the evidence of this? Surely with the thousands of gays who have served there must have been hundreds of incidents of assault and homosexual rape, since we are told by those who oppose their service that they cannot possibly control themselves and would be a real and present danger to heterosexual troops.
There is a historical precedent for refusing to allow discrimination in the military.
When President Truman ordered the military to desegregate in 1948, the vast majority of the military — not to mention the population in most of the countries from the South where a big portion of the members of the military come from — had sharply racist tendencies against the blacks. When he sent his 10-point program to Congress on February 2, 1948, instructing “the Secretary of Defense to take steps to have the remaining instances of discrimination in the armed services eliminated as rapidly as possible,” he endured a storm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the run-up to the national nominating convention. But even when support for discrimination spread so far beyond the military and political stakes were so high, his response was not to postpone doing what was right. Instead, he responded by saying “My forebears were Confederates….But my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten.” President Truman ordered the military’s desegregation because he understood that the traditional culture of the military and appeasement to any biases and racism that may have been associated with it was not a condition that he had to accept as the price of having a strong army.
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How hard would it be for President Obama to end the practice of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Not hard at all.
A new study, about to be published by a group of experts in military law, shows that President Obama does, in fact, have stroke-of-the-pen authority to suspend gay discharges. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” law requires the military to fire anyone found to be gay or lesbian. But there is nothing requiring the military to make such a finding. The president can simply order the military to stop investigating service members’ sexuality.
An executive order would not get rid of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, but would take the critical step of suspending its implementation, hence rendering it effectively dead. Once people see gays and lesbians serving openly, legally and without problems, it will be much easier to get rid of the law at a later time.
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Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, recently revealed on the Rachel Maddow show that he was gay. He has now been informed that he is to be dismissed from the National Guard. This is Obama’s first chance to act on his stated goal of repealing DADT.
During a presidential forum held by the Human Rights Campaign in August of 2007, candidate Obama said, “I will task the Defense Department and the senior command structure in every branch of the armed forces with developing an action plan for the implementation of a full repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…. America is ready to get rid of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. All that is required is leadership.”
Until recently, on the White House Web site’s Civil Rights page, the following was posted.
Repeal Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell:
President Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Additionally, more than 300 language experts have been fired under this policy, including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. The President will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense goals.
This has since been altered to read, “He supports repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security“, a change that worries some that he is weakening in his resolve.
This is not the time to let old and irrational fears destroy the lives of so many young men and women proudly and voluntarily serving their country in the military. Now is the time for President Obama to disallow the termination of Lt. Choi and take a stand against the worthless DADT rule.
