‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’: A policy whose time has passed?

John McCain just got “exactly what he wanted,” said Derrick Jackson in The Boston Globe. The senior Republican senator has always insisted he’d be open to repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell”—the controversial 1993 law requiring gays in the military to keep their sexual orientation secret—if military leaders approved and a thorough survey were conducted to assess the impact of repeal on troops. Done, and done. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this week both strongly urged Congress to lift the ban, citing a newly released Pentagon survey of troops. In the survey, 70 percent of U.S. troops said repeal would have little or no adverse impact. And yet the 74-year-old McCain continues to lead a “general Republican roadblock” against scrapping this shameful law. “It’s sad what has happened” to this once-principled American war hero, now consumed by his bitterness over losing the 2008 presidential election, said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an editorial. “Sadder still is what his prejudice is doing to tens of thousands of younger warriors,” banned by law from openly serving the country they love.

The nation is being hoodwinked, said The Washington Times. From the media to the Senate hearing rooms, this Pentagon survey is being touted as a clear victory for those who want to scrap “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But what the advocates are ignoring is that one in four troops surveyed said they’d quit the military if forced to serve alongside gays and lesbians. Why cater to the “tiny—but loud—minority” of gay troops, at the expense of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who want the current policy maintained? Among troops with actual combat experience, said Adam Laxalt in National Review Online, 59 percent warned of “mixed or negative” results from ending “don’t ask, don’t tell.” And among Marines in combat roles, 68 percent said that lifting DADT would have a negative impact.

Parse the numbers all you like, said the Baltimore Sun. The most telling statistic comes from troops who said they actually have served with people they believe to be gay: “A whopping 92 percent said their unit’s ability to work together was very good, good, or neutral.” Familiarity, in this case, “breeds acceptance,” said Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune. “It’s easy to be homophobic if you don’t know anyone who is openly gay.” Once you do, and you work alongside them, it’s impossible to keep thinking of that person as an “alien species.” As one Special Forces soldier quoted in the survey puts it: “We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.”

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But military men opposing repeal aren’t necessarily bigots, said Brendan Tapley in TheDailyBeast.com. The fact is that combat units are a uniquely masculine environment, where men develop intense trust, camaraderie, and even love. That kind of male “intimacy”—necessary when men must fight and die for one another—can really flourish only when homosexuality is a nonissue. Bringing “even a hint” of open homosexuality into this world could erode unit cohesion in unpredictable ways. It’s worth taking the time to get this issue right, said retired Col. David Bedey in USA Today. Since national security is at stake, any “rush to repeal” is sheer recklessness.

“No more excuses,” said Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. Yes, it’s possible, even likely, that allowing gays to serve openly in the military will make some troops uncomfortable—just as it made some troops uncomfortable to serve alongside women or blacks in previous generations. In 1946, in fact, 80 percent of enlisted men said in a survey that “white and Negro soldiers should not work, train, and live together.” That policy of segregation ended only when the military ordered troops to overcome long-standing, irrational prejudices. The British military initially showed strong resistance to letting gays serve openly in its ranks, said Andrew Sullivan in TheAtlantic.com. But after the policy was changed, it became “a massive nonevent,” and today, “the British military recruits at gay pride parades.” Currently, there are tens of thousands of gay men and women serving in the U.S. military with loyalty and pride, despite an antiquated policy that requires them to lie or hide the truth about their lives. “We owe it to all of them to take the knife out of their back. It is right; it is just; it is patriotic; and it is so overdue.”