DADT: It's Just Wrong

I hadn't planned to write on the "Don't ask, don't tell" controversy. I didn't believe I could add anything to the arguments which have already been publicly exhorted again and again.  But in reading a New York Times opinion piece, I was reminded of a 'rationale' frequently used to argue against the 1993 law, and while I share the goal of those seeking to repeal the law and policy, I find this particular argument distasteful.

Since Bush launched us into the 'War Against Ourselves' in the Middle East, there has been much made of the military losing valuable Arabic translators, and others who have skills high in demand, as the result of gay service members being forcibly discharged under DADT.

In 1993, having just elected the first President to ever speak before a gay political group during his campaign, there was modest hope for a growth spurt to occur in America's normally glacial pace of social progress.   And yet, I very soon found myself having to stand, literally, in protest to a reactionary and villainous Congress, who quickly sought to subvert any moves by the commander-in-chief to end the persecution of gay service men and women.

Almost two decades later, the reason for ending a shameful burden placed upon gay men and women serving in the military is no less powerful today than it was then, or has always been.  Removing that burden, not imposed on heterosexuals, is simply 'the right thing to do'.

To argue that the unjust discrimination should be ended as part of a 'quid pro quo' is almost as shameful as the policy itself.  Yes, I see the strategic rationale of it as an argument, and understand that, as a practical matter, anyway the change can be achieved will have a substantial positive impact upon many thousands of lives, but it feels wrong.

A logical retort to such an argument is to propose that it be temporarily suspended only when the military's resources are stretched, and/or to selectively apply it, exempting those specialty services which are high in demand.  For proponents of DADT, that seems a quite reasonable solution for the 'problem' which the argument presents, being that it retains the notion that under 'normal' circumstances military service by gay men and women is a debility.   

It is not unusual, for even the most normalized among us, to imagine life if we were different in a variety of ways, such as being blind, paraplegic, in a racial minority, deaf, or a number of other mental, physical, or social ways. People can empathize with those who are different, particularly when the difference is a mental or physical disability, but also in circumstances where merely being different is a hardship.

Yet, one difference, though so widespread across all cultures, gene pools, continents, history, and even animal species, has been, not only deprived of empathy, but vilified, demonized, even rhetorically denied its natural origins.  The resulting isolation, fear and deprivation of essential psychological needs have made it, possibly, the harshest of all differences with which to live.

Heterosexuals have found it difficult to grasp that beyond the two physical manifestations of sexual identity there exists a myriad of mental manifestations of sexual identity.  Our scientific and medical professionals have been, reprehensibly, absent in educating Americans on this subject, permitting the viral psychosis of homosexual phobia to prosecute a quiet holocaust against good people for centuries.

"The love that dare not speak its name," from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas in 1894, is a more appropriate title for the poorly named 1993 law.  However, the phrase "Don't ask, don't tell" does zero in on the real problem, that ignorance is both a predominant characteristic and preferred policy of the American people, two facts of which they are ignorant. 

-RLee