...equality is a slow process in the land of equality...

Support Grows In Congress For DADT Repeal by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff Posted: October 23, 2007 - 1:00 pm ET
(Washington) Five more members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors of a bill that would repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell', the ban on gays serving openly in the military. That brings the number of so-sponsors of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act to 136.
"With every new lawmaker who signs on we are one step closer to repealing this discriminatory policy that has been preventing otherwise qualified men and women from serving our country and contributing to the finest fighting force in the world," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), the lead sponsor of the bill.
The new co-sponsors are Reps. Al Green (D-TX), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Ron Klein (D-FL), Patrick J. Murphy (D-PA) and Mike Thompson (D-CA).
Congressman Murphy is an Iraq war veteran and former West Point professor elected to the House in 2006.
He also is a former JAG Corps attorney, and served two deployments after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 - the first to Bosnia in 2002 and the second to Baghdad, Iraq in 2003-2004 as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.
For his service, Capt. Murphy earned the Bronze Star for service and his unit earned the Presidential Unit Citation.
"Congressman Murphy, a respected voice on military matters and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, will be an irreplaceable ally in our work to repeal 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,'" said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network in a statement.
"His support sends a strong message that those who know our armed forces best also understand that ending this law is the right thing to do for our military and our country."
DADT was enacted in 1993. Since then more than 12,000 servicemembers have been dismissed when it was learned they are gay. According to statistics from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network which advocates for gays in the military an average of two service members are dismissed under the law every day.
A report prepared by the Government Accountability Office shows that nearly 800 people with skills deemed ‘mission-critical’ by the Pentagon have been dismissed under the law, including more than 322 language experts, at least 58 of whom specialized in Arabic.
The GAO said that DADT has cost American taxpayers more than $364 million since it was implemented.
The number of gays and lesbians who have attempted to enlist and rejected because they said they were gay is not known.
A study conducted last year for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network concluded that the U.S. military could attract as many as 41,000 new recruits if gays and lesbians in the military were able to be open about their sexual orientation.
A Zogby poll taken in 2006 showed three-out-of-four members of the military who are serving in Iraq or recently returned home don't care if someone in their unit is gay.
The poll, taken for the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also found that nearly one in four U.S. troops say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual.

Gays in the Military Debate -- DéjÃ* Vu 1993? - HUMAN EVENTS

Last week, Marine General Peter Pace, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, restated his support for the military’s homosexual ban, a view shared by all Republican presidential candidates. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin (Iowa) said Pace’s “immoral” label for homosexuality was “hurtful” and “demoralizing,” a position embraced by Democratic presidential candidates. Is it déjà vu 1993?

In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton pledged to lift the ban but he ran into a firestorm of opposition when he took office. After a contentious six month national debate, Congress sent Clinton a strict exclusion statute (10 USC § 654) which he signed. However, the Pentagon drew-up contrary implementing regulations known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT). The law excludes homosexuals from the military but the Clinton-era regulations say soldiers need not declare their sexual orientation and the military can’t ask about it.

Once again, a political fight is brewing over the ban on gays serving openly. Leading Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton describes her husband’s DADT compromise as a “transition policy” that is no longer “the best way … to proceed.” She argues that the military should regulate behavior, not orientation. Apparently the senator fails to understand that those with a homosexual orientation tend to behave consistent with it, which is a problem for the military. Clinton’s fellow Democratic presidential candidates share her DADT view.
The policy question should be: Does the homosexual ban satisfy military necessity? The 1993 Congress thought it did and, so far, six appellate courts have agreed. The would-be candidates of both parties should explain how their homosexual policy position will sustain combat effectiveness, which requires both unit cohesion and readiness.

The 1993 ban is premised on the fact that there is no constitutional right to serve. Thus, Congress may decide who should or should not serve. For 231 years, the US military has discriminated among potential recruits based on a variety of characteristics and behaviors, with the intent of forming the best possible force. That’s why, according to the General Accountability Office, the Pentagon discharged 59,098 service personnel for drug offenses, 26,513 for weight standards and 9,501 for homosexuality between 1993 and 2004.

Under American civilian law, few employers can fire someone for being overweight. In civilian life, no one would lump drug use, obesity and homosexuality in the same category. But in the military, they are all factors that affect the bottom line: unit cohesion and combat effectiveness. So they have to be dealt with in similar ways.

Military service requires a unique blend of skills, ethics, culture, and bonding to ensure an effective fighting force. Soldiers must be constantly available for worldwide deployment to a combat environment. There is often no escape from this structured environment for weeks and sometimes months on end. Active service places demands and constraints upon its soldiers, not the least of which are bathing and sleeping in close quarters.

The uniqueness of military life knows few bounds. It begins on the first day of boot camp and continues until the soldier is discharged. Their conduct is subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice at all times -- on and off base and on and off duty.

Combat effectiveness grows in this unique medium by building ready and cohesive units. These units are built and sustained through constant and close associations over long periods. Unquestioned trust and confidence are essential to them. They are sustained on a diet of fairness and absence of favoritism.

Cohesion is the indispensable glue that holds units together. It’s the single most important factor in a unit’s ability to succeed on the battlefield. In 1993, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell told Congress:

To win wars, we create cohesive teams of warriors who will bond so tightly that they are prepared to go into battle and give their lives if necessary for the accomplishment of the mission. … We cannot allow anything to happen which would disrupt that feeling of cohesion within the force.

Sexual tensions and sex-based favoritism in intimate settings destroy cohesion, whether they involve opposite- or same-sex attraction. If we respect women’s need for privacy from men, then we ought to respect the same need on the part of heterosexuals with regard to homosexuals. Protecting privacy in a military with open homosexuality would necessitate recognizing essentially four sexes and would severely disrupt units.

The military has successfully put soldiers from very diverse backgrounds into long term close quarters situations. Behavior, especially sexual behavior that deviates from the norm, undercuts the cohesion of the group. Therefore, most military professionals consider such behavior detrimental to the development and maintenance of cohesive units.

The other component of combat effectiveness is readiness, medical and personnel. In 1993, the Army’s surgeon general conceded that the homosexual lifestyle is unhealthy. A Navy study has found that HIV infections within the force have declined since passage of the 1993 ban. This has likely saved the taxpayer medical costs. It is significant that HIV positive service members, although retained in the military, may not be deployed overseas or on ships.

Recruitment of a quality volunteer force is a readiness challenge especially in wartime. Open homosexuality in the ranks will negatively impact the propensity for many young people to enlist due to the influence of parents, teachers and pastors. Americans most likely to serve voluntarily tend to be conservative and religious, the demographic least likely to embrace homosexuality.

Retention of the serving force could also be affected by lifting the ban. Military personnel tend to be conservative and self-identify with one of 104 faith groups that share General Pace’s view that homosexual behavior is “counter to God’s law.”

However unequal and discriminatory the military’s homosexual ban may seem, it is necessary to protect the services’ combat effectiveness which is the product of unit cohesion and readiness.

In the end, the burden of proof that lifting the ban would do no harm rests with those who would change the policy. So far, the Democrat presidential candidates and the radical homosexual community have offered no credible proof to that effect.

Now that's money well-spent. In the same way that the billions in cash that has dissapeared in Iraq was well-spent.

How much longer will my tax dollars be wasted on this pointless and discriminatory policy? Come on, Congress... DO something!

I wonder how much money is spent trying to educate people that there's nothing "wrong" with homosexuality?
$364 million in 14 years. Hell I might cost $1 million all by myself every 10 years.

Obviously not enough, since there are still a few people who feel otherwise.

Of course, nearly all that money comes from private donations, whereas DADT is 100% funded by tax dollars.

This isn't even apples and oranges, it's apples and jeeps.

How can you fight common sense? There's no amount of "re-education" that will convince me that there is a bit "off" about a gay person.

And I fully support DADT as a former member of the armed forces. I think it's money well spent. And cheap too as far as government programs go.

Why would I fight common sense? I embrace it. The problem with common sense, of course, is that the older I get, the more I see how uncommon it is.

The policy is ineffective in achieving its stated goal, not uniformly applied, and has shown no measurable value in increasing unit cohesiveness, or whatever it was supposed to do.

All it has done is ruin the careers of a good number of good and honorable soldiers, at taxpayer expense.

Why would anyone support that? Why would anyone FUND that?

For the same reason the adultry and sodomy laws are still on the books in the military. They are used when needed. Both those laws are also the equivalent of DADT.

I will definitely defer to you on the topic of military laws.

But I find myself wondering, shouldn't the sodomy laws have been thrown out as a result of SCOTUS decriminalizing sodomy in 2003? The state laws on sodomy have been invalidated by that... wouldn't that also affect the military law?