Can gays serve openly in the U.S. military or not?
President Barack Obama has promised the 17-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will end on his watch, but when a federal judge declared it unconstitutional and told the armed forces to stop enforcing it, Obama’s Justice Department asked for, and got, a suspension of that order. The Pentagon, meanwhile, told recruiters it was OK to enlist gay applicants, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates issued a not-quite moratorium on discharges. Well, all right then. But can gays serve openly in the U.S. military or not?
Groups fighting to end the misguided policy regard all of this as welcome, though incremental, progress. Most counseled gay service members to keep quiet for now.
As an example of just how squirrelly the whole thing has become, consider this excerpt from a Friday New York Times story about the Gates directive: The senior defense official who briefed reporters was granted anonymity under Pentagon-imposed ground rules, although under pressure from reporters, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said that the official could be somewhat further identified as ”also a lawyer.” Asked why the Pentagon did not want the official who is also a lawyer identified, Mr. Morrell replied, ”That’s the way we’re choosing to do it.”
Come out, come out.
Obama has said more than once that he can’t change the law with the stroke of a pen. But the federal court’s ruling last month presented him the opportunity to effectively lift the ban without lifting a finger. Ruling in a case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization that challenged the law, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips said “don’t ask, don’t tell” violates gay service members’ right to free speech and to equal protection under the law. That left the president in the politically awkward position of deciding whether to challenge the ruling or claim a back-door victory by letting it stand.
Obama did the right thing by ordering an appeal. The Justice Department has a duty to uphold existing law. It can’t pick and choose based on the whims of whoever is in the White House. That means making a good-faith effort to definitively resolve the constitutional questions, convenient though it might be to accept a ruling from a sympathetic judge. That doesn’t mean the administration has to exhaust all appeals before “don’t ask, don’t tell” can end. As the president correctly notes, this is a job for Congress.
In May, the U.S. House passed legislation to repeal the law, with the caveat that the president and his top military advisers must first determine that doing so would not compromise troop preparedness. The Senate balked at the same measure last month. There is talk of another vote during the lame duck session after the Nov. 2 election.
Buying time for that vote, the Justice Department argues that an abrupt change in policy would be “enormously disruptive … particularly at a time when this nation is involved in combat operations overseas.”
We’d submit that the troops engaged in those combat operations have shown, through quiet and courageous professionalism, that the nation has nothing to fear from letting gay citizens serve openly. In war zones, it is a nonissue. Service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan overwhelmingly say they’d be comfortable serving alongside gays; one in four say they already have. So much for “don’t tell.”
Three out of four Americans support ending “don’t ask, don’t tell.” So do Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s only a matter of time. But politicians continue to dither, even as courts take a dim view and soldiers shrug it off as irrelevant.
Our country and our soldiers deserve better. Get it done.
