"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Must Be Changed

About 16 years ago, one of our country's more stupid laws was passed. It was called "Don't Ask - Don't Tell" (DADT), and it laid down the rules for military service by homosexuals in the United States. Basically, it said the military would not ask if a person was gay/lesbian, and that person could serve in the military -- as long as they kept their sexual preference a secret.

The reason given at the time for this silly law was that "unit cohesion" would be damaged if homosexuals were to serve openly in the military. This wasn't just based on bad information -- it was based on no information at all, but just bigotry. As Dr. Nathaniel Frank said, “The ban on openly gay service was not based on sound research because no research has ever shown that openly gay service hurts the military.”

Maybe the venerable conservative politician Senator Barry Goldwater put it best when he said, "You don’t have to be straight in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight."

But for the last 16 years, this ridiculous law has damaged both personal lives and our military. Over that period, at least 13,000 qualified men and women have been discharged from the military simply because their sexual preference became public knowledge in some way. Another 4,000 soldiers voluntarily leave each year because of this policy.

For the good of our country, the military and the soldiers who bravely serve our country, it is time to end this nonsense. On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to end DADT. But so far, he has done nothing to keep this promise. In fact, since he became president, 265 service members have been discharged because of DADT -- some of them with badly needed specialities.

President Obama says the law needs to be changed by Congress. It does, but in the meantime, he could issue an executive order banning military discharges based on DADT. This could and should be done immediately, and then followed up with congressional action.

But instead, President Obama, Secretary of Defense Gates and military leaders are discussing ways to make DADT "more flexible". Gates said, "One of the things we're looking at is, is there flexibility in how we apply this law....What I discovered when I got into it was it's a very restrictive law. It doesn't leave much to the imagination, or a lot of flexibility." He went on to say, "That's the kind of thing we're looking at -- seeing if there's a more humane way to apply the law until it gets changed."

They want to exchange a lot of discrimination for a little bit of discrimination. That's unacceptable. Discrimination is evil and unconstitutional -- it doesn't matter whether it's a little or a lot. DADT is not improved by making the discharge decisions on a case-by-case basis.

There simply is no way to improve DADT. It needs to be eliminated completely.