Time to dump 'Dont Ask, Dont Tell'

Despite open pleas by some self-outed -and others revealed by circumstance- military gays and bi's we havent seen any effort by the Administration to change the policy. These people are still being discharged when the facts come out.

If there's one thing that's happened in the last ten years, it's what I would call a sea-change in the image of the military as a professional and high-standard group of people as a whole. Oh, there's been a few bad apples but there are in any large group.

Reading the wiki on 'dont ask, dont tell' highlights the ambivalence of the troops in general. No to mention a perhaps surprising attitude of the American Public.

The last is particularly telling. On the whole, only those who werent sure they had gays in their units had negative responses.

This is a sign that 'Dont Ask...' actually works. The reason it works is partially because of the unspoken SECOND facet: 'Dont Seek, Dont Flaunt'.

I have several 'gay shipmate' anecdotes about my time in the Navy, all of them ending badly for them. I wont go into them, because that was a different time and place. But one thing remains constant, in my opinion... - No one wants to be sexually harassed.
- And people dont like the uncomfortable and/or tense atmosphere resulting from being propositioned.

Like the Average Joe and the gay guy who lives in the next apartment or the house down the street, no one really gives a crap.. unless the guy insists on his practices being accepted as 'normal'; most of us dont think they are normal. And neither has society over thousands of years. We dont care if you're flaky in your own house just dont shit on our lawn, so to speak.

and the increasing role of females integrated into operational units have set the standard by which all should be measured. Once this was done, 'Dont Ask' started down the road to 'moot'.
Like the original author of the policy wrote: 'Dont Seek, dont Flaunt'.
And THAT can and must be, and is, applied to heterosexuals as well.

While there's a number of cases involving sexual harassment of female GI's, there's no reason to think the morale would suffer more if the same rules were applied to sexuality across the board.

Iraq and Afghanistan have elevated the image of military professionalism tremendously. It's time to apply that to the predilections of those who want to serve.
They are big boys {and girls} now. they can take it!

 

Ugh, I've gone back and forth so many times on this one.

I have no doubt that I served with gay men and women. The toughest sergeant major I ever had was lesbian, all 5' 2" and 110 pounds of her. I couldn't have given a shit if any of them came out of the closet. They were fine soldiers before and would be fine soldiers afterwards. One guy I reasonably suspected was gay was a very good soldier and person who I always wanted to tell, "If you are gay, don't worry. It won't make you any less of a shithead".

The don't ask don't tell policy is enforced in three ways. If you state you are gay, that's one way. If someone says "So-and-so is gay" then so-and-so can say "No I am not" and that will be the end of it. Homosexual acts will get you tossed. Last, gay marriage will get you the boot too.

Yet, the problem I saw with coming out of the closet was how it was used in practice. As Fog and Don know, people will do funny things to get out of combat. We had 3 females who used this policy to get out of a war zone. One was the ringleader, Pv2 A. This girl found two different partners to go roll around with, both of whom I was certain were not lesbian, but decided that was their ticket out of Baghdad -- and they got it. So, Pv2 A got Pv2 B and PFC C together, I am sure they talked among themselves and decided to do this to get out, and in two separate incidents they did what they did.

I don't know what all of this means, other than how some people rode the system left a nasty taste in my mouth. Don't seek, don't flaunt indeed. That is my issue with open homosexuality in the Army, and again, I have gone back and forth on this issue more times than I can remember.