Repealing DADT: Just Do It

I could fill this entry with hyperlinks to news articles about Obama’s push to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the predictable conservative opposition, but if you’re that out of touch with current events you probably don’t read blogs either.

DADT, summed up, says that being openly gay is grounds for discharge.  Therefore any gay who comes out while in uniform has clearly broken the rule and must be discharged.

Some arguments against DADT:

• The ban on acknowledging one’s own homosexuality is morally wrong, forcing gays who want to serve their country to lie.  This is closely related to the Nuremburg precedent stating that following morally-wrong orders is no defense against war crimes.
• When it comes to past marijuana use, nearly everyone who joined the military from the mid-1960s to the present day lied too.
• Many of the gays who have been prosecuted and discharged since the imposition of DADT were actually doing their best to comply with DADT.  They weren’t telling . . . they were outed by others, often anonymously.

DADT (which never put much of a dent in gay witch-hunting) has been a travesty.  It’s clearly wrong and should be repealed.  We’ve wasted far too much time investigating and prosecuting people for things that have no impact on mission accomplishment.

We veterans like to brag on the military for leading the way in racial integration in the late 1940s and early 1950s, forgetting that President Truman had to order us to desegregate, that the firestorms of protest were far greater than those we’re seeing today over repealing DADT, and that even after Truman integrated the military we fought it for years, kicking and screaming all the way.  But we did it, it worked, we’re better for it . . . and it was the right thing to do.

I realize this part of my argument has no validity, but hypocrisy infuriates me, and when it comes to homosexuality the military spells Hypocrisy with a capital H.  When I attended Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk one of my seminar mates was a lesbian army officer.  She never declared, of course, but it was obvious enough, and if anyone had any doubts they were dispelled when she brought her girlfriend to graduation.  She was a good officer, she loved the military, she did her job well, and no one objected . . . not her seminar mates, nor any AFSC officials, nor her army superiors.  In spite of a few high-visibility prosecutions of lesbian military members over the years, in general the military tolerates their presence.  Male homosexuals, on the other hand, have almost always been, and continue to be, vigorously sought out and discharged.

The opposition argument de jour is that there’s a war on and this is not the time to impose social experimentation on the military.  There’s always a war on, and even when there isn’t, the opposition will still say this is not the time.  That’s what they said when Truman desegregated the military.  What they meant, and what they mean now, is that it will never be the time.

Sometimes you simply have to overrule objections and do what is right.  Now is the time to do what is right.

Update (11:02 pm): reader Gwen posted a link in the comment below that contradicts what I said about the military being more tolerant of female than male homosexuality.  It appears my experience was the exception, not the rule.  I do think, however, that DADT set up a system whereby anyone could accuse anyone else of homosexuality (with impunity and no threat of having to face the accused), automatically setting the process of investigation, prosecution, and discharge in motion . . . and that perhaps DADT has made things worse for gays in the military than they were before DADT.