‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’: Is the end near?

As thousands of gay-rights marchers converged on Washington last weekend, President Obama again disappointed his supporters in the gay-rights movement, said John Cloud in Time.com. Obama repeated his campaign pledge to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the 16-year-old policy that allows gays to serve in the military only if they hide their sexuality. “But once again he said nothing specific about how he plans to do that,” leaving many gays openly frustrated and angry. Obama talked pretty Saturday night about the plight of gays in a homophobic society, said Andrew Sullivan in TheAtlantic.com, but took no responsibility for his inaction. “What did he promise to achieve in the next year? Or two years? Or four years? The answer is: nothing.”

For that, at least, the military can be grateful, said James Bowman in The Weekly Standard. Changing the policy to allow homosexuals to serve openly would mistakenly treat “military service as a human right.” It is not a right—it is an honor. And “the history of military honor” suggests that homosexuality is, as current policy states, “incompatible with military service.” Why? Because soldiering is “inextricably bound up with ideas of masculinity,” and most heterosexual males simply don’t want to serve alongside soldiers they do not perceive as masculine. With the country in two shooting wars, now is no time to conduct sociological experiments with our national defense.

Bad news for you bigots: Even the Pentagon no longer subscribes to these ridiculous ideas about gays, said Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times. An essay just published in Joint Force Quarterly, a journal published by the National Defense University Press, shoots

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cannonballs through the argument that gays undermine troop morale and unit cohesion. Among its findings: Australia, Britain, Canada, and Israel, all of which lifted bans on gays in the military, have seen “no impact” on troop performance, readiness, or cohesion. Did I mention that the essay’s author, Col. Om Prakash, works for the secretary of defense and that the article was personally reviewed by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? That’s not the only sign of change, said Gabriel Winant in Salon.com. A discharged gay Arabic linguist, Lt. Daniel Choi, was even invited to lecture at West Point recently. In the end, it might be admirals and generals, and not Obama, who put “don’t ask’’ where it belongs: in the trash can.