Ask. Tell.
Senate Passes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Repeal.
It’s long past time we got rid of the whole “gay people can’t serve” business, even if it is the “well, you can serve, as long as you never ever talk about it” variety. I, for one, am glad to see the United States take one step closer to catching up with the rest of the world in terms of equal rights for GLBT folks.
My personal argument against this kind of policy has always been tied solely to the most mundane of interactions. Here it is in a nutshell:
Lt. Heterosexual: “…had a great weekend, my wife and I had a great time out for dinner and a movie…” PERFECTLY OKAY AND ALLOWED.
Lt. Homosexual: “…had a great weekend, my partner and I had a great time out for dinner and a movie…” ILLEGAL, GROUNDS FOR DISCHARGE.
Really, it’s not about showers or lodging or combat morale or whatever excuses people have been making for the last however many years – the DoD survey pretty much proved that such things aren’t an issue, except for a handful of bigots who think about those things way more than is probably healthy, and for some reason figure that if nobody mentions anything, they can pretend that there aren’t thousands of gays and lesbians serving with honor and competence today, thus preserving their fragile, bigoted worldview.
In the end, it’s about a whole subset of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines being unable to talk about the totally banal bullshit we all talk about with our co-workers during down time without fear of losing their job.
That’s why the policy was wrong, and why I’m so glad this measure passed both houses of Congress. A lot of people got a really great Christmas present this year.
