Ask Not

Last night Linda and I watched a great show on the local PBS affiliate. It was called "Ask Not" It covered the history of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy and its affect on our country. This policy of blatant discrimination has accounted for over 12,000 military personnel being discharged from the military, due to their being gay. (Women were disproportionately fired, totaling only 15 percent of military service members but nearly half of DADT discharges in 2007.) Almost 800 of these discharged members were considered critical specialists, including linguists, pilots and intelligence analysts—all positions for which the military was suffering a shortage. The cost of training and replacing these specialists between 1994 and 2003 is estimated to be more than 363.8 million dollars. It is believed that our inability to have known about the 9/11 attack was due to the serious shortfall of skilled linguists that we had at the time that knew Arabic.

Facing a severe personnel crisis during wartime, the military has had to lower its standards for accepting recruits to compensate for the more qualified members discharged under DADT. From 2006 to 2007, the number of moral waivers granted to Army and Marine recruits, who would otherwise be ineligible for service because of their criminal convictions, doubled. In 2006, the Army issued 511 waivers and enlisted seven soldiers convicted of rape, incest or sexual assault; three soldiers convicted of manslaughter; one convicted of kidnapping; three convicted of performing indecent acts with a child; and three convicted of making terrorist or bomb threats. That same year, 612 service members were discharged under DADT. The old excuse of " I wouldn't want to be in a foxhole with a homosexual" goes out the window when you consider that there are over a million veterans of military service. Just like in civilian life, chances are you were in a foxhole with a gay person or had several in your platoon.

So what is the status of Don't Ask, Don't Tell ? In the 1990s, there were several challenges against the constitutionality of DADT, but 1998’s Able v. United States firmly upheld the law. During his campaign, President Barack Obama pledged to end the policy, but the power to do so remains with Congress. As of March 2009, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2009 (H.R. 1283), which would replace DADT with a nondiscriminatory policy, still lacks Senate sponsorship and the necessary number of House votes to pass.
While repealing DADT still faces strong opposition among some active-duty military service members and the Congressional armed services committees, a 2008 poll revealed that 75 percent of Americans support allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military—a significant increase from only 57 percent in 1993.

In comparison to other countries stance on allowing gays into the military we are way behind what others have done (is that surprising?) These countries allow openly gay people to serve in the military:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
The Philippines
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom


To test your recruitment skills against that of our military go HERE and see who you would enlist. It's an eye-opening exercise on who the military is accepting into service these days.