‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ an anachronism

Aubrey Sarvis

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Today a House armed services subcommittee will begin the first serious examination in 15 years of the federal law commonly known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and its effect on our clearly overextended military’s ability to fight two wars in the Middle East. The law prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in our armed forces.

Fifteen years ago President Clinton tried to issue an executive order abolishing such restraints. The Joint Chiefs and several powerful players, such as then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga., went on the attack full throttle. It would disrupt unit cohesion, they said. Straight service members will never stand for it. The military was not the place for “social engineering.”

The offensive worked. Suddenly gays and lesbians were a threat, if not to our armed forces, then at least to their senior officers in the Pentagon, who had been fiercely lobbying on Capitol Hill against their commander in chief’s order. (These generals apparently had forgotten that the role of the military in our society is to salute and follow orders.) It is hard to believe now, but this question virtually paralyzed Congress and the presidency for many months in 1993.

Unfortunately, there was little discussion about whether or not qualified gays and lesbians who loved their country and wanted to serve might actually strengthen our military in critical fields. Instead, scare tactics carried the day. Clinton had to get this one behind him and move on, quickly. He withdrew the executive order. Nunn prevailed, and for the first time in our history Congress enacted a law that permitted an employer to fire a person because of sexual orientation.

The question today is the same as it was then: how best to recruit, utilize and retain good people in the military. What has changed in the intervening 15 years is that 140 members of the House of Representatives have seen the problem and sponsored a bill to repeal the ban (HR 1246).

Public opinion has changed, too. According to a recent ABC-Washington Post Poll, 75 percent of American people support allowing gays to serve in the military, “whether they ‘tell’ or not.” Polls conducted over the past three years have shown virtually the same results.

One witness the House subcommittee will hear from today is retired Army Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman, a straight black man with 30 years of military service. Coleman says in his prepared opening statement: “I have seen and experienced what happens when our armed forces treat some service personnel as second-class citizens. I also know what a difference it made when we placed qualification ahead of discrimination and tore down the walls of racial prejudice in our fighting forces. I ask Congress to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and allow the military to benefit from having the best and the brightest serve regardless of sexual orientation.”

Coleman enlisted in the Army at 17. He was there in 1948 when then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Omar Bradley resisted President Truman’s executive order to end racial segregation. The argument then was that black and Asian service members were happy in their segregated units. White soldiers would never sleep and eat and shower with black soldiers.

The same catch phrases were trotted out: “unit cohesion,” “the military is different,” “social engineering,” and so on. (Similar arguments, it should be noted, were made against admitting women to military academies.)

Notwithstanding the storm of protest his order had created on Capitol Hill and initial resistance from the Pentagon, Truman did not back down and our military — and society at large — is far stronger for it.

Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are now serving in the ranks — more than 65,000 of them, according to data from the Williams Institute at UCLA. More than 1 million have worn the uniform of this nation. That figure comes from the Urban Institute, which extrapolated data from the 2000 census. For several years gays and lesbians have been serving without fuss in the military of 24 developed nations, including Israel and all the NATO countries but Turkey. None of Nunn’s dire predictions came to pass. But in the United States, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law is still on the books.

Truman did the right thing in 1948, but not the easiest thing. It’s always easier in the short run not to disturb the status quo. The same is true today. Congress has a unique opportunity to do the right thing, to right the wrong that Congress did in 1993. The American people have moved on. Congress can, too.

Aubrey Sarvis is executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The organization is a national nonprofit legal services, watchdog and policy organization that seeks to end discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.