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(As of yesterday, I am now a contributor to the excellent blog The Gay-Atheist. The founder, Alex, assures me the fact that I am neither gay nor an atheist [though give me a couple of days on that second one] will not be held against me. Anyway, here is my first lengthy contribution, published at The Gay-Atheist a few minutes ago.)
On Tuesday a military commission in Syracuse, New York recommended the discharge of Lt. Dan Choi from the New York Army National Guard. Choi is a 2003 graduate of West Point, a combat veteran who commanded troops in the present conflict in Iraq, and a translator fluent in Arabic. This spring the Army notified Lt. Choi that he was being discharged for violating the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which allows gay men and women to serve their country as long as they keep their sexuality a secret. Lt. Choi publicly admitted his homosexuality on The Rachel Maddow Show.
 “It’s an immoral code that goes against every single thing we were ever taught at West Point with our honor code,” Choi has said about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He points out precisely what makes the policy so twisted: not merely that it is plainly discriminatory (straight men and women in the armed forces face no discipline of any kind for making their sexual orientations known), but that it requires gay Americans to lie, or at the very least maintain a conspicuous silence, about their personal lives.
Still, no matter how disappointing it is to see the military dismiss from its ranks as capable and dedicated a soldier as Dan Choi, it shouldn’t be a surprise. The military’s ban on the openly gay is well known and unambiguous, and Lt. Choi clearly violated it. Under the law, there was no other decision the commission which assembled on Tuesday to hear Choi’s challenge could have made. Change was never going to begin there. To end the bigoted and nonsensical ban on openly gay servicemen and –women, we must change the policy itself. And to change that policy, we must change the law.
We have a better shot at changing the law and ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the next few years than we have since the policy was instituted during the early days of the Clinton administration. Since the unfortunate passing this past November of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, there have been many encouraging signs. The legislatures of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine all legalized same-sex marriage — Vermont’s over the veto of its governor. In April the Council of the District of Columbia voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, opening the door for eventual full legalization. A few days before that, thanks to a ruling of the state supreme court, same-sex marriage was legalized in Iowa, of all places. (And it has little legal relevance for us, but hey — did I read that they just decriminalized homosexuality in India? I did!) Never in my lifetime has the iron been this hot. The time for long overdue legal reform is now. But before soldiers like Dan Choi can freely and openly wear the uniform of our country in the armed forces, more than the law must be changed.
( Read the rest . . . ) | |
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