Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Be Honest
Currently, the US House and Senate are considering bills that include provisions that would repeal the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gay military members. This is the misguided law that, in a military that otherwise demands absolute honesty from its troops, requires those same troops to lie about their sexual orientation if asked. In a society that prides itself on the equality of all of it’s citizens, that states in it’s Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal”, we have a system in place that seems to make a significant percentage of our population less equal than the others. It is time that we put a stop to this foolishness.
An estimated 10 to 15 percent of our population is homosexual. It would be expected that a similar percentage of the members of our military is homosexual. This is going to be the case, whether or not those individuals actually declare their sexual preference in public. Despite the claims of some of those who wish to see discrimination continue, hiding the matter will not change it. Besides, the homosexuality itself is really not the matter, is it?
A few of our military leaders claim that “unit cohesion” will suffer if it were known that homosexual people were among the members of the military. The fact is, they are already there. They have simply been ordered not to “come out of the closet.” These people do exist.
Some leaders claim that homosexuals would sexually molest their comrades or partake in inappropriate displays of affection. In fact, it seems quite unlikely that gay service members would do this with any greater frequency than would heterosexual service members. While such cases are not rampant, it is certainly not unheard of for a heterosexual service member to sexually molest a colleague, or rape a local resident after an off-base drunken night on the town, or to partake in inappropriate displays of affection themselves. I have yet to see any evidence where a gay person would do so any more frequently than a straight person.
No, this is all about hiding blatant discrimination. There will be no problem with gay servicemen serving with their straight counterparts, since they do already. They would simply be able to do so without being required to lie about it. Until 1948, servicemen were segregated by race in their units. At that time, there was pressure from a few military leaders that if the services were integrated, it would cause a loss of “unit cohesion.” Today, the US Military is a better force with all of it’s members working together.
The issue here is not so much about discrimination. Americans have been successfully able to serve in the US Armed Forces regardless of their race, gender, or religion. Certainly, we can allow all to serve regardless of their sexual preference. No, the issue here is that the military requires some of it’s members to lie about themselves. However, if they are caught telling that lie, they will be discharged for lying. This is no way to run a military.
We do not need to take more time to study this issue. The time to end this policy is now. If not now, then when? We will have the courage to do the right thing. We were wrong for a while, just as we were wrong to segregate people by race. We can get over it. We just need to have the courage to make the change.




