Domestic Perspective: It’s time to end ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

BY TRAVIS FICK
Managing Editor

In the United States of America, Uncle Sam wants you to join the armed forces, except if you are openly homosexual. This is a sad, but true, fact. The United States of America does not want openly homosexual men and women to serve with those who are heterosexual. Because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), openly homosexual men and women cannot be their true selves when they patriotically serve our nation in the military.

When we face an enemy without a country and a growing movement in the radical Islamic religion, we need every solider who is willing to fight for our freedoms. Yochi Dreazen of the Wall Street Journal states that since DADT’s implementation in 1993, more than 14,000 openly homosexual men and women who enlisted to serve our nation. 14,000 openly homosexual men and women were told that their service to the United States is not valued as highly as service from heterosexuals.

A 2009 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that an astounding 75 percent of Americans support allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the armed forces without having to conceal their sexuality. DADT is an outdated, discriminatory law that is being protected by conservative politicians who are afraid of change. These ignorant conservative politicians, such as Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., who in 2006 supported lifting DADT, are using partisan arguments that seek to appease the extreme conservatives in the United States. During the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in early February, McCain said, “At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.” So McCain and his allies believe that when the United States is seeing a decline in enlistment in the military, then it is ok to place limits on who can serve?

The United States is better than this. Those who support DADT, such as Senator Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said that allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military would lead to “alcohol use, adultery, fraternization and body art.”

But supporters of DADT are using scare tactics and arguments that are similar to those of the racist senators who supported segregating African Americans from Caucasian military troops back in the 1940s. Former Senator Richard Russell, D-Ga., said that President Harry Truman’s executive order that desegregated the U.S. military would be “sure to increase the number of men who [would] be disabled through communicable diseases and the crime rate among servicemen [would] soar.”

It is time to end DADT because “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” I ardently agree with this statement. But those are not my words; those are the words of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.