Time for Immediate Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy

By Ralph E. Stone

May 28, 2010

I applaud yesterday’s vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to repeal the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that allows homosexuals to serve in the military on the condition they do not disclose their sexual orientation. The House vote came after a similar vote in the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. I object, however, that the repeal, if passed, will not be immediate. Rather, the repeal will not go into effect until after a $5 million Pentagon study is completed by December 1, and after the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, certify that the repeal will not affect the military’s ability to fight. I only wish President Obama had fulfilled his campaign pledge to repeal the policy by executive order after becoming president.

What happens if the study recommends against repeal, and what exactly needs to be certified and studied?

Consider there are about 30 countries in the world, including nearly all of the NATO members, as well as South Africa, Brazil, and the Philippines, that allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military. And on May 16, 2010, representatives from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Israel and the Netherlands, met at the Brookings Institute to discuss how each of the militaries in those countries handled allowing gays and lesbians to serve their countries. The consensus was that, in spite of concerns before the change, when gays and lesbians were allowed to serve, it was a non-issue.

In 2000, Aaron Belkin, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Melissa Sheridan Embser-Herbert, a veteran of the U.S. Army and Army Reserve, and Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, co-authored an exhaustive 44-page study on Canada, which, after a series of lawsuits in 1991, changed its policies to allow gays to openly serve in the military. The study, which at the time was regarded as the most comprehensive academic study of homosexuality in a foreign military ever completed, concluded that the change in policy had “not led to any change in military performance, unit cohesion, or discipline.”

A recent poll showed that 75 percent of Americans support gay citizens openly serving in the U.S. military.

Then why the need for a study? Probably because Congressional leaders and the White House are trying to appease homophobic Congresspersons who will ultimately oppose the repeal anyway.

Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” immediately. It is the right thing to do.

Ralph E. Stone

I was born in Massachusetts; graduated from Middlebury College and Suffolk Law School; served as an officer in the Vietnam war; retired from the Federal Trade Commission (consumer and antitrust law); travel extensively with my wife Judi; and since retirement involved in domestic violence prevention and consumer issues.

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