The injury and injustice that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy of the military (imposed on it by Congress) has done is pretty well recognized. It ranges from good patriotic gays and lesbians who seek to serve their nation being hounded from the service to the illegal harassment of straight folk who are falsely accused, to gays and lesbians who would be--and would like to be--good soldiers, sailors, aviators and Marines being steered away from military service.
The vast majority of progressives would like that policy to be done away with, and for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to be permitted to serve in the Armed Forces in exactly the same way, under the same rules, as the rest of us.
The truth is that time is on our side. Society's views are changing (with frustrating slowness, but steadily). Because of Bush's War, the military is so desperate to make its recruitment numbers that it is dropping standards on who it will let in (both in terms of education and criminal past), and also dropping its standards for keeping people in--behavior which would have resulted in discharge a decade ago is being effectively ignored now.
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