Right from its inception in 1993, the U.S. military’s contorted “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays has been a costly and hypocritical bust.
There’s no fine-tuning this ill-conceived policy. It should be repealed. A bipartisan group of 52 legislators moved on Wednesday to do just that by introducing the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would dump “don’t ask.”
There’s growing evidence that such a move would not be disruptive to the military–nor to the political careers of those who support the move. A Gallup poll in December found that 63 percent of Americans support gays serving openly in the military.
In 2000, Britain’s military warily repealed a similar anti-gay policy, under the directive of a European court. The British rationale had been–does this sound familiar?–that gays would undermine unit cohesion, hinder the effectiveness of the armed forces and discourage heterosexuals from signing up.
During the last five years, though, Britain’s experience with gays in uniform has been so uneventful that the Royal Navy last month launched a program to recruit gay sailors. The navy wants to draw personnel from the widest talent pool possible.
The “don’t ask” policy forces men and women who have volunteered to serve their country to lie or conceal their sexual orientation. That places a tremendous psychological burden on them and a financial burden on the country.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated last month that the discharge and replacement of nearly 10,000 service members since “don’t ask” went into effect has cost taxpayers $191 million.
Sound outlandish? Add the costs of recruiting, housing, feeding, clothing, equipping and training soldiers. Then figure what a waste of money it is to discharge some because they are gay and to recruit and train replacements. Then ponder how many Humvees that money could buy.
Even more self-defeating is the loss of talent: 322 language specialists have been released under “don’t ask,” including 113 trained in Arabic, Farsi or Korean, skills that are in critically short supply in the military.
The military may be making its own statement about all this. Since 2003, as demands on U.S. forces have grown, the discharge of gay soldiers has dropped sharply, suggesting it’s not quite as objectionable to be gay once the bullets start flying.
It has been more than a decade since President Bill Clinton proposed lifting the ban on gays in the military, then scurried to head off heavy criticism by adopting “don’t ask” as a compromise. The military experience since then, and an evolution in public attitudes, argue for dropping the policy and permitting homosexual enlistees.
As Sen. Barry Goldwater said in a 1993 column in the Washington Post: “You don’t need to be `straight’ to fight and die for your country, you just need to shoot straight.”
