It’s time to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and allow gay troops to serve openly for the first time in history, the nation’s top defense officials said on Tuesday, with the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff proclaiming that service members should not be forced to “lie about who they are.”
However, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen asked for a year to study the impact before Congress would lift the controversial policy.
In the meantime, Gates announced plans to loosen enforcement rules for the policy, which says, in essence, that gays may serve so long as they keep their sexuality private.
Reversing the Pentagon’s 17-year-old policy toward gays “comes down to integrity,” for the military as an institution as well as the service members themselves, Mullen told a Senate hearing.
Unpersuaded, several Republican senators said they would oppose any congressional effort to repeal the policy.
Ten months before voters elect a new Congress, some Democratic leaders were also leery of trying to change the policy this year, when both sides concede Republicans are likely to pick up seats, especially after Republican senator-elect Scott Brown’s surprise victory last month in Massachusetts.
Repealing don’t-ask-don’t-tell is not a winning campaign strategy for a party under siege especially in the South and Midwest.
“What do I want members to do in their districts? I want them to focus on jobs and fiscal responsibility,” House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, classifying gays in the military in a category of “a lot of other issues” that will invariably come up.
“It’s never a good year” for Democrats to bring up the controversial policy, Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin said. “You can expect that it’s going to be a rough ride.”
However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he didn’t see why it should wait another year.
The Pentagon announced an 11-month review of how the ban could be lifted, as US President Barack Obama has said he will work to do. But there is no deadline for ending the policy, which dates to president Bill Clinton’s tenure and that gay rights advocates are pressing to overturn.
Obama has called for repeal but has done little in his first year in office to advance that goal. If he succeeds, it would mark the biggest shake-up to military personnel policies since former president Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order integrating the services.
Homosexuality has never been openly tolerated in the US military, and the 1993 policy was intended to be a compromise that let gay men and women serve so long as they stayed silent about their sexuality. Clinton had wanted to repeal the ban entirely, but the military and many in Congress argued that doing so would dangerously disrupt order.
Repealing the ban would take an act of Congress, something that does not appear close to happening.
While several Democratic senators also praised Mullen and Gates for what they said was courageous stance, a number of Republicans spoke strongly against the idea of a repeal.
Gates drew unusually pointed criticism from Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee for saying the review would examine how, not whether, to repeal the ban.
Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the panel, icily told Gates he was disappointed in his position and suggested the Pentagon was usurping Congress’ job.
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