By Al Tompkins
Since former president Bill Clinton announced the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in 1993, the U.S. military has said that if you admitted to being gay or were openly gay, you could not serve.
Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, will tell the U.S. Senate it is time to stop asking. But don't expect things to change quickly.
The military now says it wants to study the matter for a year and phase out the policy. The first phase includes suspending dismissals when the dismissal is based on a third party that accuses someone of homosexual activity.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said:
- "More than 13,500 service members have been fired under the law since 1994.
- "73 percent of military personnel are comfortable with lesbians and gays (Zogby International, 2006).
- "The younger generations, those who fight America's 21st century wars, largely don't care about whether someone is gay or not-and they do not link job performance with sexual orientation.
- One in four U.S. troops who served in Afghanistan or Iraq knows a member of their unit who is gay (Zogby, 2006).
- "Majorities of weekly churchgoers (60 percent), conservatives (58 percent), and Republicans (58 percent) now favor repeal (Gallup, 2009).
- "Seventy-five percent of Americans support gays serving openly -- up from just 44 percent in 1993 (ABC News/Washington Post, 2008)."
In 2009, the Quinnipiac Polling Institute found that 56 percent of Americans believe that "the ban on openly gay men and women in the military should be repealed." Of those who have family actively serving in the military, half said the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy should be repealed.
A Government Accountability Office report offers the following background [PDF]:
"According to DOD officials, U.S. forces have had policies prohibiting homosexuals from serving in the military since the beginning or World War II. DOD's current policy on homosexuality was formalized in 1982 and specifically state that:
"Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission. The presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the Military Services to maintain discipline, good order, and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among servicemembers; to ensure the integrity of the system of rank an command; to facilitate assignment and worldwide deployment of servicemembers who frequently must live and work under close conditions affording minimal privacy; to recruit and retain members of the Military Services; to maintain public acceptability of military service; and to prevent breaches of security.
"According to DOD, a homosexual is 'a person, regardless of sex, who engages in, desires to engage in, or intends to engage in homosexual acts.' DOD define a homosexual act as 'bodily contact, actively undertaken or passively permitted, between members of the same sex for the purpose of satisfying sexual desires.' "
As mentioned in the report, the GAO tried some time ago to calculate how much it costs to enforce the policy. Based on 1990 figures, the GAO said recruiting and initial training costs of replacing personnel discharged for homosexuality were about $120,772 for each officer and $28,226 for each enlisted troop. The real cost of replacing personnel discharged for homosexuality, however, should include other expenses such as court costs and out-processing, the report said.
The issue of whether or not homosexuals should serve in the military has been studied for years, even before the Clinton-era policy was enacted. The GAO report said:
"The Navy's 1957 Crittenden Report (which did not question the underlying premise of DOD'S policy) stated, 'A third concept which persists without sound basis in fact is the idea that homosexuals necessarily pose a security risk.' A more recent draft report, prepared by DOD'S Defense Personnel Security Research and Education Center (PERSEREC), commented that the DOD policy prohibiting homosexuals from serving in the military was based on the same rationale used to limit the integration of blacks. Specifically, it stated:
"The order to integrate blacks was first met with stout resistance by traditionalists in the military establishment. Dire consequences were predicted for maintaining discipline, building group morale, and achieving military organizational goals. None of these predictions of doom has come true."
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