Gays: Repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

It’s about time, said The New York Times in an editorial. Sixteen years after the Clinton administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” law went into effect, President Obama said during his State of the Union address last week that he’d work to repeal the policy, so that gays could serve in the military without fear of discovery and expulsion. DADT has been used to drive 13,000 loyal service members out of the military, for no good reason. Gays serve openly, and without damage to “unit cohesion,” in the armies of Australia, Israel, Britain, and Canada, and polls show a majority of Americans are now ready to shed the prejudice of a “bygone era.” Even Adm. Michael Mullen, the military’s top uniformed officer, told Congress this week that eliminating the prohibition is “the right thing to do.” The onus is now on conservatives, said Adam Serwer in The American Prospect Online. If the GOP continues to battle for legal discrimination, it “will redefine the GOP as the party of homophobes for another generation.”

Pinning that label on conservatives may be the whole point of this exercise, said Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online. Obama and the Democrats won’t push repeal in this election year, so they’ve promised merely to study how to get rid of DADT. So why bring it up? To incite “the inevitable harsh sound bites” from the Rush Limbaughs and Pat Robertsons, in order to convince independent voters that Republicans are bigots. I hope conservatives don’t “take Obama’s bait.” Sorry, but we must take a stand, said William Kristol in The Weekly Standard. Otherwise, the most trusted American institution—our military—will be “subject to an untested, unnecessary, and probably unwise social experiment.” With the U.S. engaged in two wars, this is no time to discover the effects of openly homosexual soldiers on “unit morale and cohesion.”

Perhaps conservatives have nothing to worry about, said Marc Ambinder in TheAtlantic.com. Obama promised during the presidential campaign to eliminate DADT, but then ducked the divisive issue all year. Is he now renewing his vague promises solely to appease disillusioned liberal supporters? Look at how Obama broke his promises to close Guantánamo, said Jennifer Rubin in CommentaryMagazine.com. “At some point, the president’s fans on the Left will realize they have been had.”

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