Don't Ask Don't Tell [Part One]

Don't Ask Don't Tell [Part One]

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain said he would support the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the military's ban on gay soldiers serving openly in the armed forces, when the Department of Defense said it was important to repeal the policy. Soon after, the Department of Defense announced that the policy was doing more harm than good but McCain, who has a lot of pull in the Senate Armed Services Committee as the ranking Republican member, continued to support the policy. McCain's rhetoric then changed and he began to say he would support the policy after the Pentagon produced an internal troop study gauging troop opinion, and only if the study came out against Don't Ask Don't Tell. Well, the Pentagon study has been released, and its results are incredibly in favor of repealing the decades-old policy. Troops overwhelmingly supported overturning Don't Ask Don't Tell with the singular and notable, though unsurprising exception of the Marines. And yet, John McCain's stance is yet to change.

It is the time to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. The fact that the military continues to enforce a policy that stops active and knowledgeable soldiers from serving their country simply because of their sexual orientation is not just reprehensible; it is unconscionable. More importantly, is tells something truly important about the leadership in this country: that they cling to old religious and cultural biases, that they are unable to let go of their own prejudices when doing so would help the nation, and that they, on some level at least, subscribe to the misled and dangerous philosophy that 'gay is wrong'.

[Photo credit: cvt.ca]

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