President Obama and the Future
of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
By
RADM Al Steinman
USPHS/USCG (Ret)
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We finally have a President who supports gays
serving honestly in the military. It’s been a longtime coming, but we’re not
there yet. President Elect Obama has stated he supports repeal of Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell (DADT), but only after thoroughly discussing it with his military
advisors. His post-election transition website contains the following statement1:
"The key test for military service should
be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination
should be prohibited. Obama will work with military leaders to repeal the
current policy [DADT] and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense
goals."
Here are my thoughts on this issue:
1) Having senior military officer support for
repeal is critical. Even with a Democratic White House, and Democrats in
control of the House of Representatives and Senate, repealing the law will be
difficult without Department of Defense concurrence. The Joint Chiefs of
Staff must tell Congress and the American people that the military has the
leadership capabilities to make it work, and that the military welcomes all
Americans who want to serve their country and who meet entrance standards.
If the Joint Chiefs present the same old arguments that surfaced in 1993,
namely gays serving openly would degrade unit morale, unit cohesion and combat
readiness, there may well be insufficient support in Congress for repeal.
2) Repeal of DADT would do nothing more than
allow gays and lesbians to serve in the military under the exact same rules and
regulations as everyone else. I think it is important to keep this
concept in mind. It is nothing more than equality under military rules. Under
DADT gays and lesbians, who put their lives on the line, suffer the same risks,
discomfort and dislocations of deployment as do their straight peers, have to
suffer the additional burden of living in constant fear that their career can be
instantly terminated if the wrong person finds out about them. They
frequently have to lie about who they are, what they do on their off-duty time,
who their family members are, to whom their writing letters, making phone calls,
etc. Straight service members have none of these problems.
3) Repeal of the DADT law would end the
manpower drain of not only the 600-700 people kicked out under the provisions of
the law, but more significantly it would end the loss of 2500-3500 troops who
leave each year quietly and voluntarily because they're tired of living in fear
and living a lie. That’s about 3000-4000 people annually who leave the
military because of DADT. These troops include many highly skilled individuals:
pilots, doctors, nurses, engineers, corpsmen, language specialists, as well as
ground troops, sailors, airmen and even special forces personnel.
All of these individuals are trained, experienced and paid-for; a raw recruit
out of boot camp or a nugget officer out of OCS cannot easily replace any of
them.
4) A majority of current Iraq/Afghanistan
troops say they know gays serving alongside them. A recent Zogby
International/Palm Center poll of the troops2
found that 23% of them said they knew for certain there were gays in their own
unit (and most said more than one), and another 45% said they suspected there
were gays in their own unit (and again, most said more than one). That means
that 68% of the troops either know for certain or suspect there are gays in
their own unit. Yet unit morale, unit cohesion and combat readiness are
obviously not suffering. These facts alone destroy the entire
philosophical foundation used to justify and promulgate the DADT law.
5) There are an estimated 65,000 gay and
lesbian service men and women currently serving in the military; all of them are
at risk of being kicked out under the current law. As indicated above,
many of them choose to leave, when they otherwise would have stayed in, because
of strains of serving under DADT.
6) 26 of our foreign military allies,
including all of our English-speaking allies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and
United Kingdom) allow gays to serve honestly; none of these nations report any
of the problems assumed to occur when gays are allowed to serve alongside their
straight counterparts. And many of our own troops serve right alongside
gay troops from these allies, again without any problems of unit morale, unit
cohesion or combat readiness. Furthermore, Israel has long allowed gays to serve
openly, and who in their right mind would question the combat readiness of the
Israeli Defense Forces?
7) Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General John Shaliskashvili (who had to implement DADT when it was
originally enacted and who originally supported the reasoning behind the law)
has stated that the nation and the military have changed over the past 15 years
so that gays can now serve honestly without fear of hurting the military. He has
now been joined by over 100 other flag officers who recently published a
statement advocating gays serving openly in the U.S. Armed Forces3.
In addition, this past summer a Flag Officer Study
Group4, consisting of a Navy
Vice Admiral, Lieutenant Generals from the Army and Air Force, and a Brigadier
General from the Marine Corps, recommended that the DADT law be rescinded.
Finally, nobody expects President-elect Obama
to make repeal of DADT a high priority, as the nation obviously has more
important problems to solve (particularly the economy). But hopefully the new
President will keep DADT in mind when he considers his new appointments for
Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is critical, as I stated above. Then perhaps
sometime during the next two years we can look forward to a time when patriotic
gay Americans can serve their country with the same honor and dignity as do
their straight counterparts.
Notes:
1. http://www.365gay.com/news/obama-posts-campaign-pledges-on-lgbt-rights/
2. http://www.palmcenter.org/publications/dadt/dont_ask_dont_tell_isnt_working_survey_reveals_shift_in_military_attitudes
3. http://www.palmcenter.org/press/dadt/releases/104Generals%2526Admirals-GayBanMustEnd
4. http://www.palmcenter.org/publications/generals-flag-officers-report
©
2008 Gay Military Signal
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