Around the corner: Don't Ask - Don't Tell

By meg on Friday, July 10, 2009 - 10:30

There is a great deal of hullabaloo in the news right now regarding the U.S. military’s antigay policy Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the Clintonian era’s failed attempt at allowing members of the LGBTQ community to quietly serve their country. Before this law was in effect, anyone signing up for the military could be asked to verify their heterosexual status, and be denied entry if a person responded that he or she was indeed homosexual.

DADT prevents military recruiters from asking the hetero/homo question, and as long as a gay or lesbian soldier or sailor keeps quiet, and hides their personal lives from their coworkers, they can serve with impunity. However, if the sexual orientation of an individual is brought to the attention of the military, there is the possibility for an investigation to take place, and if someone is found guilty of homosexual acts, which is illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), then that individual will be forced out of the military.

Implemented in 1994, what DADT did for gays and lesbians wishing to serve in the United States Armed Forces is to allow them in the door, nothing else. This policy failed to put in any protections for LGBTQ military personnel and although they are allowed to be in the military, relegates them to second class status by denying them the right to have a romantic relationship with whomever they choose.

While advocates of DADT in 1994 hailed the policy as a way to open the doors for gays to serve openly, the reality is this policy only allows for a sustained effort to kick out individuals which the military spends millions of dollars to train, including translators and pilots. The statistics vary, but the numbers of individuals discharged from the U.S. military over the last 16 years is well over ten thousand.

However, DADT is not a catch all and the one thing many advocates of DADT (including government and military mucky-mucks) fail to understand is that today, while there are still some service men and women who have some of those ‘sharing the showers with the gays’ issues, many do not. There are people who are ‘out’ and have not been discharged because no one they work with cares enough to make a formal complaint [unfortunately there is a double standard here, and the personal examples this author is aware of involve lesbians and not gay men].

So why all the fuss lately? President Obama said before the election that he understood DADT as a failed policy, that discharging valuable, highly trained individuals just because he or she is homosexual is not only a waste of precious resources but makes the U.S. military less effective, and that he would work to repeal the law. However, leaders in the LGBTQ community have been criticizing Obama for not acting fast enough on DADT and with two recent victims (Lt. Dan Choi and Lt. Col. Victor Fahrenbach) of the law speaking publicly about losing their jobs, activists and journalists alike are asking the administration why the delay.

(from http://secretaryclinton.files.wordpress.com)

Although President Obama stands firm on his commitment to repeal the law (which must be accomplished through an act of Congress), the immediate question is why not enact some type of temporary stop loss order on the implementation of DADT.

However while the White House is trying to repair international relations, get major health care reform passed, and fix the economy, it appears they are currently trying to pass the gays off onto the pentagon, the same people who have been kicking us out of the military for the last sixteen years. It will be interesting to see the process with which Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is revoked and how long it takes for the folks in Washington to quit playing politics.