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President Obama spoke at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay civil rights advocacy group, and restated one of his campaign promises that he will end “don’t ask-don’t tell”, the controversial program in the military that prohibits authorities from asking a service member if he or she is gay, along with prohibiting service members from announcing that they are gay.
Authorities can’t “ask”, and service members can’t “tell”.
The program is often confused with the practice of banning gay people from serving in the military. It is not that. Even under don’t ask-don’t tell (DADT), homosexuality is still banned in the military. Changing that policy would require Congress to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). All DADT does is to take much of the investigative power out of the hands of the various military investigative agencies that before DADT, would routinely engage in modern day witch hunts aimed at drumming out gay service members.
It would be like instead of passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress passed some other silly law that said authorities couldn’t just come out and ask someone if they were black. People also couldn’t just come out and tell people they were black. As long as someone didn’t admit that they were black, they could ride at the front of the bus or sit at the lunch counter like anyone else. They wouldn’t be required to drink from a water fountain labeled for Negros. Once they publicly admitted that they were black, they would have to ride in the back of the bus and stop eating at the lunch counter.
I served with all sorts of people in the military, even gay people. I learned that they can be just as adept at performing their military duties as anyone else. People are people. Banning someone from serving in the military because they are gay is just as retarded as banning someone from serving because of the color or their skin.
I think it’s great the President Obama wants to end the ban on gay people serving in the military. I guess he can add it to the list of stuff he promised to do if he was elected. Eventually though, he’s going to have to start crossing things off that list. Hopefully he starts doing it sooner rather than later.
