President Franklin D. Roosevelt grappled with problems similar to what we face today. While trying to enact controversial policy changes, Roosevelt came right out and told a group of reformers that they need to lead the way so that their leaders can follow. He said, "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." If we truly want to fix our country, then it’s time for progressives to step up to the plate and start showing support for positive change. Although many of us don’t know what policies will help the economic crisis (even the experts aren’t sure yet), there are non-economic issues where it’s clear that the current policies aren’t working, and changing them would provide enormous progress. One of those areas is the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy.
As a veteran, I can assure you that there are plenty of gay people who want to and do serve in the military, and they serve with honor. While anti-gay bigots push for continued oppression on the grounds that honesty and openness would somehow destroy troop cohesion, forcing gay and lesbian service members to hide their sexual identity is even more antithetical to military readiness.
You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight. Twenty four nations currently allow openly gay soldiers to serve in their military, including the Israel Defense Force since 1983. They have recognized that sexual identity presents no barrier to job performance, and their experience clearly proves that service by gay soldiers has no adverse effect on the military. Meanwhile, in the U.S. military, recruitment failures and personnel strains have led to recruiting felons even as we are discharging gays and lesbians! As taxpayers and citizens of this great nation, do we want good soldiers dismissed for biologically based orientation when who they are has nothing to do with their ability to serve?
Worse, the resistance to changing anti-gay policies is exactly the same as that used to block women and blacks from military service: "It’s too disruptive, they pose a threat to unit discipline and cohesion, and the military wasn’t designed to be an instrument of social change," proclaim the naysayers. Maybe so. The same excuses were used to block racial integration of the military sixty years ago. Integration and allowing women to serve absolutely did disrupt the military, but with top-down directives and clear expectations, they got over it. Now we have African Americans and women serving at all levels in the armed services, even on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s time to remove barriers to gay and lesbian citizens serving honorably in our military.
We have other historical reasons for making this change now. The economic crisis compels us to fine-tune government, to eliminate waste and to increase productivity and effectiveness. By discharging hundreds of Arabic language interpreters under DADT, the military has eviscerated it’s own ability to function in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of investigating, firing and replacing thousands of gays and lesbians, and having to pay huge retention bonuses because of the artificially created shortage is in the millions of dollars. With the current economic crisis and our stretched military, we can’t afford to be spending resources this way.
Eventually DADT will be repealed and all citizens will be considered equal under the law. This is America after all, and although we have a long history of oppression of many groups, our founders established constitutional equality and we’ve been striving toward that goal ever since. America typically rewards the marginalized and disenfranchised who serve honorably in its wars. Slaves were freed during the ACW, and by war's end the Union Army was one-sixth black soldiers. Truman desegregated the military after WWII, in which blacks and Nisei served with distinction (remember the Tuskegee airmen and the 442nd RCT). Women finally received the right to vote after service in WWI. Didn’t we just hear last year that America wasn’t ready for a black president? We sure put that fallacy to rest!
A bill has been introduced in Congress to end DADT, but Obama can effectively stop the wasteful purging of gay and lesbian service members with an executive order suspending investigations and the DADT discharge process. Militaries in other countries that lifted their bans acted to end discrimination only when so ordered, not on their own volition. The last thing we need right now is a protracted fight in Congress with Republicans posturing over "morality" and using divisive anti-gay rhetoric to win contributions and midterm votes from their fundamentalist base. This is one Change that’s inevitable. So let’s "lead so our leaders can follow" and push President Obama to stop this hurtful discharge practice that hinders our military’s effectiveness. Congress can follow-up with a repeal of DADT when it’s clear that Obama’s policy changes haven’t caused the sky to fall down.