A Day to Remember

For we are not a nation that says, 'don't ask, don’t tell.' We are a nation that says, "Out of many, we are one." -- President Barack Obama.

On September 20, 2011, the federal law and U.S. military policy known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was officially repealed. No longer must gay and lesbian military professionals be forced to lie about a fundamental aspect of their humanity to serve the country they love. Consistent with the ideals of America’s founding, these patriotic Americans who wish only to serve their country can now do so without fear of rejection and retribution stemming from an unfair and immoral law.

I do not know personally what it means to be gay any more than I know what it means to be black or female. But I do know that, as human beings with sexual needs and preferences, all of us, gay or straight, are what we are; our sexual orientation is not a matter of choice. It just is. I did not choose to be straight any more than I chose not to be gay. Sometime around the age of twelve I woke up and discovered that girls were not so bad after all, that they looked better and smelled better and that I was increasingly motivated by mysterious forces to want to be in their company. Talk to anyone who is gay and you will discover that things were not much different for them, except they were not permitted to openly discuss their feelings for fear of being bullied, ridiculed, or worse.

The discovery that one is gay in America often is accompanied by great internal struggle and resistance. According to a 2009 study by the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, adolescents rejected by their families for being gay are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. As writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh has noted, "The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere." Sexual identity is not a lifestyle preference, but a biologically driven fact of life, a concept so fundamental to the issue of gay rights that I continue to be confounded by the silliness of the opposition. And yet, walk into a conference of the Southern Baptist Convention in which war, poverty, guns, and equal rights for gays are on the agenda, and guess which one they are most passionately against.

In 1948, President Harry Truman issued an executive order to desegregate the armed forces, thus ending what until then had been a disgraceful contradiction of American ideals. Although Truman was not an enlightened man by today’s standards on matters of race, he nevertheless believed that any man who risked his life fighting for America’s freedoms was entitled to the dignity and respect afforded all soldiers; that men willing to die defending the Constitution were entitled to the same protections guaranteed by that Constitution. Sixty-three years later, it is difficult to imagine that we ever felt differently. Today, many of our most decorated soldiers and some of our finest officers and generals are African Americans. With the formal repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, we can begin finally to apply the same principles of justice and equality to the many dedicated and committed gays and lesbians serving our country.

According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, since 1993, when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell became federal law (a political compromise agreed to after President Clinton was lambasted for attempting to do what is now the law of the land), more than 14,500 military personnel have been discharged simply because they are gay. The United States has refused to allow thousands of highly qualified men and women to serve, not because they did anything wrong, not because they were disloyal, insubordinate, or incompetent – indeed, most served with great distinction – but simply because it was discovered that God had created them in a manner deemed unworthy of military service. That they were attracted to, or in committed relationships with, a person of the same sex caused them to be discharged, in many instances, simply because they refused to lie about who they loved, or lived with, or with whom they engaged in private, consensual relations.

“When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one,” reads the epitaph on the tombstone of Leonard Matlovich, a Vietnam War veteran who received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star and who, in the 1970’s, became the first gay service member to fight the ban on gays in the military. The Army and Marine Corps take pride in teaching values such as loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and courage. They appropriately expect their soldiers to live up to these values. Until the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, however, it was legally required that gay soldiers violate each one of these precepts. The U.S. military expected gay service members to be disloyal to their partners, dishonest with their superiors, and to suppress the personal courage needed to publicly lead lives of integrity.

Discrimination because of race, religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation in almost all contexts is morally wrong and unjust. It also is counter-productive. Eighteen years of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has negatively impacted military readiness and weakened the nation. Since 2003, at the very moment when the country desperately needed Arabic-speaking and other foreign language specialists in the war on terror, the military discharged over 300 Arabic and Farsi translators on suspicion of being gay. As the writer Ernest Gaines asked, “Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”

I am confident that someday we will look back with disbelief on the time when a decorated and capable soldier could be court-martialed simply because he or she had admitted to being gay, or was found to be in a loving relationship with a person of the same gender. Someday perhaps we will express the same sense of dismay as we do now over the racist laws of the Jim Crow South, or the outdated notion that African Americans and women were not capable of effectively serving and defending their country. That the landmark repeal on September 20th came and went with limited fanfare suggests that we are headed in the right direction, that it is just a matter of time.

There will, of course, remain people settled in their narrow and limited mindsets, convinced by misapplied biblical texts or unscientific and disproven views of sexuality that the United States, by embracing acceptance and greater understanding, is a nation in decline. In a generation or two, most of these intolerant voices will be gone. By then, the military will have adjusted to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell with little difficulty, and we will be a stronger country. As President Obama reminded us this week, “For more than two centuries, we have worked to extend America’s promise to all our citizens. Our armed forces have been both a mirror and a catalyst of that progress, and our troops, including gays and lesbians, have given their lives to defend the freedoms and liberties that we cherish as Americans.”

As we struggle with the many challenges and issues confronting the country; as we debate the proper means of countering the threat of terrorism and the merits of our continued presence in Afghanistan; as we seek political and economic solutions to increasing poverty and unemployment at home, we can as Americans at least be proud that, by ending the shameful legacy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, we have appealed to the better angels of our nature and have upheld the founding ideals of our nation.

Time To Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell

There are moments in history when a nation must strive to make the ideals upon which it was founded a reality, when the principles of equality and justice must overcome the forces of tradition and fear. On February 2, 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called on Congress to repeal the 1993 law that prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. Known colloquially as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law has resulted in over 13,000 military discharges over the past sixteen years. At a time when the military is stretched to its limits, as we fight two wars halfway around the world and contend with threats to our security from multiple fronts, we have lost thousands of troops to a policy that no longer makes sense.

“I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Admiral Mullen testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “For me personally, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”

Discharged not for misconduct, but for a sexual orientation that is biologically and psychologically ingrained, we have lost to prejudice and ignorance some of our finest and most decorated soldiers; those who have served their country admirably and with honor, simply because they are gay. The damage to our national security and military readiness from this unjust policy is substantial. Among those discharged since 2003 are over 300 Arabic and Farsi translators, without whom success in Iraq and Afghanistan is not possible. Although gay service members, like all of our troops, face the threat of death every day, merely because of their sexual orientation they must forever look over their shoulders and live with the fear of being “found out.”

It is a policy based on prejudice, not performance. By singling out a group of Americans for second-class treatment, by forcing them to hide who they truly are and to live in fear of accusation and discharge, the law harms the nation; it makes the military weaker by depriving it of a large number of loyal and talented Americans.

The present policy places our military out of step with many of our allies, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, and Australia, each of which allows gays to serve openly with no impact on military readiness, performance, cohesion, or the ability to recruit and retain troops. It is also out of step with public opinion. As noted in The Economist, a recent Gallup poll found that 69% of Americans believe that gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military. And a 2006 Zogby poll of those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan found that over 70% of service members are personally comfortable around gays and lesbians, and only 37% believe that gays should not be permitted to serve openly. It is undisputed that gays and lesbians have been serving side-by-side with distinction for decades in our military forces.

Air Force Colonel Om Prakash, who won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay competition with a thoughtful and scholarly article published in the Joint Force Quarterly, contends that the law has been a “costly failure” whose stated premise – “to protect unit cohesion and combat effectiveness – is not supported by any scientific studies.” Because the law does not explicitly prohibit gays and lesbians from serving in the military – as long as they keep it a secret – it “has led to an uncomfortable value disconnect” as service members must “compromise personal integrity.” The psychological toll alone is too great for many to withstand, as an estimated 4,000 soldiers leave the military every year due to discomfort with an unjust policy. It also places commanders in the difficult position of being expected to know everything about their troops except for one important fact. As explained by Colonel Prakash, the 1993 law:

…was a political compromise reached after much emotional debate based on religion, morality, ethics, psychological rationale, and military necessity. What resulted was a law that has been costly both in personnel and treasure. In an attempt to allow homosexual Servicemembers to serve quietly, a law was created that forces a compromise in integrity, conflicts with the American creed of “equality for all,” places commanders in difficult moral dilemmas, and is ultimately more damaging to the unit cohesion its stated purpose is to preserve.

As a result of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Army and Marine Corps have lowered their moral and aptitude standards to make up for recruiting shortages, granting “moral waivers” to thousands of new recruits, including those with felony convictions. Thus, rather than a highly qualified gay recruit with an exemplary record, the policy favors recruiting convicted felons. Even Barry Goldwater, the hero of the conservative movement forty years ago, recognized the absurdity of the present policy. “You don’t have to be straight in the military,” he once said, “You just have to be able to shoot straight.” If only his fellow Arizonan, Senator John McCain, had the same set of scruples.

In 2006, McCain told a group of college students that he would drop his objections to having gays serve openly in the military “the day the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy.’” That day came last Tuesday, when Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates stated as clearly as possible, in McCain’s presence, that it is time to end an unjust, unworkable, and ineffective law. Senator McCain, however, appears to no longer value the opinions of the Generals, as he remains an outspoken opponent of repeal.

Even General Colin Powell, who strongly opposed President Bill Clinton’s attempt to end the discriminatory policy by executive order in 1993, now agrees that the policy needs to be re-evaluated. So does General John Shalikashvili, another former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently declared, “as a nation built on the principle of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger, more cohesive military.”

In 1948, President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces, recognizing that a policy that is based on prejudice and fear, that devalues the humanity of an entire class of military personnel and treats them as second-class citizens, is simply wrong. In 2010, these same principles apply to gay and lesbian service members who desire to serve our country with honor and integrity. A military committed to equal rights for all who desire and are capable of serving is a moral imperative.

President Obama is right for seeking the unequivocal repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I find it heartening that Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen have spoken so eloquently and clearly in favor of the law’s reversal. This outdated law, based as it is on irrational fear and prejudice, sends the wrong signal to young people – straight and gay – who desire to serve our country and who are willing to risk their lives to protect our freedoms. If the United States values liberty, equality, diversity, and fairness, the U.S. military must be a place where soldiers can serve with integrity and honesty. The time for repeal has come.