 "Photo: Illustration by Brianna Kerwood")
Last Spring during the Landon Lecture, General Petraeus was asked a question regarding the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. He slyly quipped that he survived his military career by walking around landmines rather than stepping on them. The crowd nervously laughed, and the curious listener stormed out of the coliseum.
By deftly deflecting this question, Gen. Petraeus, like most ranking officers in the military, continued to ignore an uncomfortable issue in America today—the military's prejudicial "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy.
This law is the only one in America which unequivocally authorizes the firing of a citizen for simply coming out as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Due to its blatant discriminatory nature, it needs to be and should be revoked immediately.
How did this intolerable policy come to existence? Well, for years it had been an accepted practice in the military, until Bill Clinton vowed early in his presidency to revoke it. This caused a firestorm of controversy, so Slick Willy compromised.
The result was a law that banned any intrusive questions about sexual orientation to perspective military personnel (Don't Ask) but still permitted the expulsion of any person who came out (Don't Tell).
Fifteen years later, there have been add-ons to the law such as "Don't Pursue" and "Don't Harass," but the straight prejudice is still present, as are numerous statistics showing what a farce this policy is. This law has survived through vague pronouncements about how gays will hurt the cohesiveness of military units and how it will cause undue stress among an already burdened military.
Those statements are nothing more than demagoguery. According to a Zogby International Poll taken in 2006, 73 percent of military personnel are comfortable interacting with gay people, while 63 percent either support or are neutral to allowing openly homosexual or bisexual humans into the military. So, is the government letting a paranoid and homophobic minority dictate government policy?
In terms of military success, instead of helping our efforts overseas, it is severely hindering them. Since the enactment of the policy, a Government Accountability Office report found that approximately 13,000 military personnel have been discharged because they came out.
Of those, roughly 800 possessed skills, such as engineering and linguistics, that are deemed "mission critical." An estimated 30,000 have left voluntarily. If the policy is revoked, how many more would join the army?
Furthermore, most Ivy League universities refuse to allow ROTC programs on campus because of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, according to a New York Times article. Can we really afford to be losing that talent?
Financially, a University of California-Santa Barbara study found that the training these gay officers and then abruptly dismissing them has cost America around $363.8 million.
Personally, I fail to see how this situation is any different than when the armed forces were segregated 50 years ago. Against much thinly-veiled racist banter which claimed the races can't interact with each other, President Truman courageously desegregated the army.
Politically, it was much more dangerous for Truman to desegregate the army than it will be for President Obama to allow gays to serve. The Obama administration has said that it will definitely revoke "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."I hope Obama emulates Truman's political courage and revokes not only an embarrassing law for the United States, but also a degrading law for some U.S. citizens.
In the words of Sen. Barry Goldwater, "You don't have to be straight in the military. You just have to be able to shoot straight."
- Mitchell J. Widener is a sophomore in English. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.
11 comments
ART. 125. SOD O MY
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sod o my. Penetration , however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.(b) Any person found guilty of sod o my shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.---
Note that this is not discriminatory. Heterosexual people who engage in practices normally associated with homosexual behavior could also be court-martialed. DADT prevents a superior from forcing someone to answer a question about their sexual practices.
The whole debate should be less about using the military as a vehicle for social change (which, I've never heard anyone in the LGBT community articulate--former LGBT soldiers generally complain of being denied the ability to serve their country and being uprooted from their units more than anything else) and more about the true purpose of our armed services: national defense. Putting some of our best soldiers on trial for what they do on the weekends deprives the military of key talent that it needs to defend our country from enemies who themselves do not waste so much ammunition of friendly fire.
I think the greatest argument against Don't Ask Don't tell is that it encourages treachery and deceit in the armed forces. I do not believe this is true for the majority of combat units with gay members, as enlisted men and women prove to be more committed to their fellow soldiers than the higher ups at the Pentagon or to any discriminatory policy imposed upon them by an act of Congress. Still, it is highly damaging when, often because of ulterior motives, witch hunts are unleashed on bona fide soldiers by fellow soldiers that would do better to keep their mouth shut and focus on performing their own duties. Worse still is the damage to and distance in relationships that this policy creates. If the US truly has the strongest military in the world, shouldn't we be able to prove that such a small thing as a person's sexual orientation cannot interfere with a unit's cohesiveness and effectiveness?
I am not a soldier, but having interacted with many of them, and I do not put it past their character or commitment to successfully end this losing strategy.
over in Iraq. Sounds good.